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THE DANCE OF YOUTH 

AND OTHER POEMS 



BY 

y JULIA COOLEY 

Author of 'Toems of a Child," etc. 




BOSTON 

SHj:3ElMAN, FRENCH & COMPANY 

1917 



P53501 
.L795II3 



Copyright, 1917 
Shebmax, Frexch &• Company 



APR 14 1917 
6)aA-JG032' 



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TO 

MY MOTHER AND FATHER 



NOTE 

For permission to reprint certain of 
these poems grateful acknowledgment is 
made to Harper's Magazine, Poetry, 
Contemporary Verse and The Midland. 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Dance of Youth 1 

The First Poet 3 

The Dawning 5 

Completion 6 

The Poet Dispraises His Material . . .11 

world-oldness is 

Determinism 14 

The Beautiful Chance 16 

To A Mother 17 

Flood-tide 18 

The Blossoming Bough 21 

The Golden Flies 24 

The Changed Moon 25 

Entity 27 

The Song of the Unwedded Woman . . 29 

The Seeming Sea SO 

The Message SI 

The Anthem 34 

The After-song 35 

Interlude on Matter 36 

Idleness S7 

Of the Statue of Buddha S9 

To THE Night-wind 40 

Spring Sorrow . 41 

A Query in a Garden 43 

Certitude 44 

The Mirror 45 

Vide Astra 46 

Experience 48 



PAGE 

Attuned 49 

The Shadow of a Tree 50 

Magic Moonlight 53 

Insulation 54 

On the Shore 56 

Into a Room 58 

Success 59 

Defeat 60 

The Cloak 61 

To AN Egyptian Maiden 63 

The Rose of Now 64 

The Dissembler 66 

She Bends above a Flower 67 

Morning 68 

The Sun-grail 69 

Passion 70 

To A Woman in Her Garden 71 

Contentment 72 

The Poet to His Bodily Instrument . . 73 

Laughter 75 

Orion . 76 

In Praise of Sculpture 77 

In a Corridor of Statues 79 

Vanita Speaks 81 

The Quarrel 82 

A Cry 83 

Surface Snow 84 

Petals 85 

Uncloaked 86 

The Dancer and the Dawn 87 



PAGE 

Before the Dusk 88 

The Turned Blade 89 

Flame and Shadow 90 

Sleep 92 

A Prayer 93 

Spring Stars 94 

The Acolyte 96 

A Wife to Her Husband 97 

The Two 98 

The Anomaly 100 

Fancy 101 

Love Life, but Not Too Much .... 102 

The False Face 103 

In a Grove 104 

An Answer 105 

Futility . 106 

To A Soul Unprejudiced 107 

The Burnt Offering 109 

The Coquette Regenerated 110 

The Woman Ill 

Hope 114 

The Old Poet by the Fireside . . . .115 

Beauty 118 

Recapitulation in Heaven 119 

The Builders of Walls 123 



DANCE OF YOUTH 

The stars are aflare and the moon is white, 
And the wind blows over the grass ! 
Light is my youth and my feet are light, 
And swift are the years that pass. 

Come, all maidens, and bind your hands 
About your heads of gold. 
Swiften your feet and trip the sands 
Before the world grows old. 

Lais and Thais have gone from the noon. 
And Berenice bloomed of yore. 
Lesbia whiteTis beneath the moon. 
And Sappho sings no more. 

Come, while the life of you lifts in the day, 
And laughter through you slips. 
Supple and sweet is the leaping clay, 
From the feet to the fingertips ! 

Come, while love is a reaching fire, 
And never a flickered dream. 
Leap and dance till you touch the Lyre, 
And bathe in the upper stream ! 

Lais and Thais have gone from the noon. 
And Berenice bloomed of yore. 
Lesbia whitens beneath the moon. 
And Sappho sings no more. 

[1] 



A shadow lurks in the Milky Way, 
And behind the moon is Death. 
Dance, oh dance, till the night is grey, 
And the dew is a shuddering breath ! 

Ye are Lai's and Thais now. 

Ye are the fruit of the hour. 

Sway we and sing like a summer bough, 

Till another youth shall flower ! 

Lais and Thais have gone from the noon, 
And Berenice bloomed of yore, 
Lesbia whitens beneath the moon. 
And Sappho svngs no more. 



[2] 



THE FIRST POET 

Some say the first poet was the one who threw, 
From the brown, dancing ring of savage crew, 
The first wild cry of diff^erent pitch or sound, 
Or first new gesture, as they beat the ground 
With throbbing feet, and leaped in blue mid-air 
With arms defiant and with flying hair. 
Wracked as the twisted leaves of forest trees, — 
Then bent again on swift, resilient knees 
To spring with animal rebound ! They say 
That different cry, that different move or stay. 
First variant, where pregnant change began. 
Spelled the first, living, vibrant poem of man. 

Perchance. — And yet, wherefore should merest 

change, 
Unconscious shift of nerves in the wide range 
Of the organic tissue, so bespeak 
The poet ? 'Twas muscular reaction, freak 
Of Nature, wherefore should he bear the name 
Of poet, this mad-cap dancer, what his claim? 
Who shall not rather say that that first one 
Who paused beside his cave at setting-sun 
And watched the miracle with half -shut eyes 
For one bare instant, while the flaming skies 
Crowned his brown form and nascent soul with 

light. 
That he first pierced the overwhelming night 
Of savage sleep and animal desire, 
[3] 



And filled it with the first poetic fire. 
Or he again who, in some hunting-hour, 
Dropped his red spear and stooped to smell a 

flower ; 
Or he who paused beside some meadow-stream 
And listened, eyes a-gleam, to the brook's 

dream ; 
Or he who breasted the night-wind for glee. 
And laughed at drifting star and flying tree ! 

Such the first poets, not leapers on the knolls, — 
Not dancing forms, but dancing, dawning souls ! 



[4] 



THE DAWNING 

Beautiful is love in its low dawn, 

Before the word of wonderment is said, 

Or the soul's shutters are undrawn, 

When the first thoughts are incorporeally wed. 

love, touch not my lips or hands or hair. 

1 would dwell with thee always in this wise. 
To find the dawn forever dim and fair, 
And promise, not fruition in thine eyes. 



CS] 



COMPLETION 

Completion, without hope of increase, empty 

thing 
Of marbled deadness, wintry silence, shorn of 

wing. 

Completion, laurel-crowned, stripped of the 

laughing stress 
Of assay, stilled of limb. Gaunt, destitute 

success I 

Completion, sterile, without seed to propagate. 
Pale, terrible and mute with terminated fate. 

Completion, dusty-footed, with no race to win. 
Completion, crumple-fingered, with no webs to 
spin. 

Cold loser of the springing step, the starward 

plunge of youth, 
From whose dead eyes has gone the gleaming 

quest for truth. 

Closed past the happy adolescence and light 

swerve 
Of the rounding, circle-striving, crescent curve. 



[6] 



Finished, filled, completed, fruited, towered, all 

wrought, 
Full smaller than the air-wide, great initial 

thought. 

Dead, dead, robbed of the golden, swirling dance 

of flight, 
Brought to a petty perfectness, a withered 

plight. 

Worn to a cold close in a world of warm, bright 

birth. 
Faded mid bud and blossom, imitating dearth. 

Completion, poising in a universe where End 
Is not, where all is birth, growth, flight, reced- 
ing End ! 

The runner leaps to the far, shining goal 
With surging sinews, jubilant with flight. 
The winds rush past him and the stars burn by ! 
Beneath his pulsing feet swift flowers arise; 
All lives, all moves, all radiates, all sings ! 
The world is one great trumpet, he the strain. 
But when the dwindled goal is reached at last. 
He sinks upon the dusty path foot-sore ; 
The fire within his seething soul turns ash. 
The winds die down, the splendent stars recede, 
The flowers decay, the living song goes out. 



[7] 



More glorious to chase the shifting dream 
That melts into the sky, from star to star 
And flies forever on, than find a compassed 

dream ! 
How fair is that first whiff of April flowers 
That stirs the senses to unmeasured loveliness, 
And that first step upon the leaning shore 
Before the winged ship puts out to sea. 
How fair are all things guessed and incomplete. 
And therefore infinite, before 
The girdle of the act encloses them. 
Wondrous Dawn, in whose cool silences 
The glory of the day lies all unspilled 
As in a pool before the water brims. 
There lie the yet unloosened, sealed wings 
Of butterflies, the silent songs of birds, 
The hidden fragrance of the sleeping flowers, 
The fertile wealth of day's futurity. 
O wondrous, drowsy dusk that lies in swoon, 
Rich with the burden of the yet unlighted moon. 
O Spring, a-dream with all the lurking year 
That follows after, flower and bird and tree, 
O Spring, poise there forever on the hills. 
Thine eyes filled with the dream of daffodils. 
Thy body thrilling with expectant fire, 
Thy spirit shedding promise and desire ! 
Man loves thee for thy promise and his dream. 
The Summer is too wide with blossoming. 
Exuberance of flowers and flocks of birds. 



[8] 



And full-blown spheres of weary, rounded 

moons, 
Too near exhaustion and the Winter's death. 
We must have essences that take our thoughts 
And draw them out to dim infinity, 
And form processions in our eager souls. 
We must have spirals like the nebulae. 
And roomy mists and laughing distances ! 
We must have buds that hint the perfect flower. 
We must have crescent moons that keep the 

whole 
Within the slim, prophetic, mystic curve; 
We must have Dawn and Dusk and Spring and 

Youth! 

What if, — it is a shuddering thought, — 
What if the world were one great finished whole, 
One closed round of doom; one ring of death; 
One globe of dark concavity, one tomb ; 
One empire of completion, one full sphere. 
Choked with the massive labors of the past ! 
No room for seeds or hopes or wings or dreams, 
No distances, no clouds, no stirring things, 
No skies to climb, no spinning universe. 
No stars ! 

Man, blest with the yearning eyes. 
Whose search can yet discern no verge, no end, 
No tottering rim, no withered boundary. 
Whose soul is mighty with pursuit, whose world 
Is measureless — plunge on to mysteries 

[9] 



Unsolved, into new paths, new seas, new skies. 
Never at seedless aim or fruited goal arrive ! — 
Yet if perchance, star-weary, you should wing 
At some dim day into a closing round 
Of dead completion, — bend thou the cosmic 

span 
With the living deeds and the deathless dreams 

of man 1 



[10] 



THE POET DISPRAISES HIS 
MATERIAL 

Give me a mountain-side to carve, to blast ! 
I am forespent with trafficking in words. 
Words are but fragile things that flitter past 
Lighter than the light wings of humming-birds. 

They are faint aurae of the fleshless soul, 
Pale duplicates of paler, wanner thought. 
Give me a block of granite, huge and whole. 
Fierce to the touch, objective, hard, unwrought! 

So shall I bruise my flaccid palms against the 

rock 
And find it strong of substance, solid, sealed. 
So shall I sing with impact of the shock, 
And, singing, carve out beauty, real, revealed! 

And, by the gods, this statue shall have mass 
And shape and matter, curve and lift and line, 
And body that shall not take wing and pass, 
And flame more palpable than fire divine. 

We shall have beauty large and looming to the 

eyes. 
Beauty blocked in the world for men to see. 
To touch, to feel, to glory in, to prize. 
Beauty at last hewn from her mystery. 

[11] 



No more of flimsy fancies floating past, 
And words as light as lightest humming-birds. 
Give me a mountain-side to carve, to blast ! 
I am forespent with trafiicking in words. 



[12] 



WORLD-OLDNESS 

Lo, that strange thought swooped upon my 

mind again, 
That sense that I have lived through all the 

coursing pain 
And dancing pleasure of the years, — before the 

earth 
Was dreamed of in the womb of space or 

yearned towards birth, 
Before the stars struck fire within the vacant 

air, 
Or the dim nebulae spread out their misty hair. 
Know you not this at times, — this straining of 

a thought 
Too great to lodge within us, vastness-wrought, 
This sudden chaining of the pigmy human soul 
To all eternity, and the fuU, sweeping whole, — 
This instant parting of the clay, in flamed 

surprise. 
Which lets the roof of heaven into the brain's 

eyes ? 



[13] 



DETERMINISM 

Quite, quite secure and fast, philosopher, 

In this dark thought, — that all our deeds are 

fixed 
Within the shell of our identity ? 
Are we but pearls cast by the tide of time. 
Marked by some fire from the begetting slime? 
Are we indeed so closely, roundly set 
Within the swift-revolving wheel of things, 
To move as the wheel moves and not dance off 
Into the realms of unadventured space, 
And unconditioned, happy, happy search? 
Is it quite certain that we find our way 
By mounting paths our reaching forebears 

raised ? 
Are these our acts, so seeming-free, so swift. 
Deep down and rooted in the unyielding soil of 

past ? 
Do we but mimic in enacted deed 
The thoughts poured in our minds by past 

effects ? 
Are we bound hand and foot and heart and 

brain, 
Lashed blindly by that skulking genius, — Fate? 
Are these our tears brewed in the bowl of Fate? 
Is this our mirth foam-spilled from out its 

hand ? 
Are not our deeds our own ? — 

We're mastered then! 
[14] 



Automata ? — 

Ah well, if this be true, 
Let's laugh a Fate-brewed laugh, within the 

light, 
Rejoicing that we live to see ourselves 
Go dancing, at Fate's summons, down the way ! 
The way is bright, life moves with beauty on. 
Through all the years it moves with beauty 

on, — 
Through whirl of stars and flight of rounded 

worlds. 
Through foam of seas, and airy dance of motes. 
Through rise of life and glint of ocean-form. 
Through flash of fin and heavy growth of 

power. 
Through splash of beast and surge to open land, 
Through press of nerves and silent birth of 

brain, 
To breath of man ! — 

Oh sing, philosopher, 
That at this point our souls flame into space 
To watch the predetermined dance of hfe ! 



[15] 



THE BEAUTIFUL CHANCE 

What if the planets have no plan, 

The universe no aim? 
What if there's nothing worth in man, 

And in a God the same? 

What does it matter, after all. 

The sun will not unburn. 
The stars not from their spaces fall, 

The stream of life not turn. 

All lives and flames and moves and sings, 

There's beauty all abroad. 
From comet-sweep to meadow-wings, — 

As if there were a God ! 



[16] 



TO A MOTHER 

Woman of many motherhoods, I stand before 

you 
With my unscathed virginity, 
And I envy you all your body's pains and 

anguishes, 
And your soul's divinity ! 



[17] 



FLOOD-TIDE 

We meet each other, you and I, with smiles 

And shallow idiom of the mortal world. 

But well below the little, shimmering rill 

Of parley runs a deeper-surging tide. 

The tide that flows between our utter souls, 

Unfathomable thoughts that heave against the 

shores 
Of our small beings, waves of visioning 
That may not be translated into form 
Or mould of intercourse, strange, phraseless 

passions. 
Dim imaginings borne in from God, 
Or from the centres of the ranging stars. 
We feel them surging, but we speak light words. 
They are too vast for our young compassing, 
For in them are old thoughts of nebulae. 
Of contacts of the stars and births of moons, 
The vital processes of the blown earth, 
The stir of origins, the drift of spores. 
The golden flight of pollinating bees. 
The search of wings for wings, of flower for 

flower. 
Stamen for pistil, wind-borne seed for soil. 
And the eternal yearn of man for woman ! 
Courses through us the immemorial tide. 
With the resurgent retinues of love. 
The columns of all lovers who have lived 

[18] 



From the first dawn of beauty, through the 

years, 
On, on to the still-fertile present, 
And through the legions of futurity! 
And, tributary to the sea, the streams 
Of beauty which are ministrant to love, 
Through all the naught-withholding rush of 

time. 
Song and music, poetry, dancing, revel. 
Color and worship, painting, fire and light, 
Rose windows and the spire that springs to God ! 
And in the pulsing currents of the tide 
Visions and yearnings — and faces of little 

children. 

Once, as we fared together in the night. 

Speaking jocosely of the latest verse, 

Tossing our words above our straining hearts, 

We suddenly passed into an open street, 

And there, above the house-tops, loomed Orion. 

The eternal river smote us, with his fires. 

And we were mute. — Then, childlike, fearful 

Of the vast, open verity of heaven. 

And of the fullness of our souls, we laughed. 

"Vers libre," I said. "Yes. What a thing 

it is ! " 
Once, as we walked, you made unreasoned stay 
From speaking, — and the waves washed us both. 
Last night we met and touched hands in the 

dance, 

[19] 



Palm upon palm, vein upon vein, as soft, 
As lightly as two nestling butterflies, 
But there was conscious passion in the touch. 
Repressed and fierce, sufficient to destroy 
And crumple the ten fingers ! — 

Still we wait. 
In awe of the immensity of love. 

I wonder in what moment of great pause 
And loosened beauty, the on-coming sea 
Will sweep upon us, inundate the rills. 
And flood us with the resistless, radiant tide ! 

I wonder. — I anticipate. — I fear. 



[20] 



THE BLOSSOMING BOUGH 

Before the white shape of the soul of you dies, 
Brim you with life in the day ! 
Bask on the bough 
Of the blossoming Now 
A-scent with the warm sun^s ray, 
And breathe it and gather it up with your eyes. 

Linger, your body a-curve with the tree, 
Feeling it, sensing its wood 
Blocked in the air, 
Existent and fair, 
Knowing it salient and good. 
Linger, your body at one with the tree. 

One with the bark and the trunk and the hour, 

One with the branching of Time. 

One with the day, 

One with the spray, 

You at the tree's tip, the prime, 

You for a moment the climax, the flower ! 

Feel the sun of eternity drift through the sky, 
Filling your flesh with the light, 
Bathing you. 
Swathing you. 
Painting your blood in its flight. 
Bask you in beauty before you die I 

[21] 



Rest close upon the ridged bark, 
Sun-branded, yellow-warm. 
And let it press, 
Without redress. 
Upon your sentient form. 
Fluting you with its patterned mark. 

Flick it, too, with gay white hands, 
And let the essence blow. 
Unbind the scent, 
With wonderment. 
The spice and musk that dimly flow 
Beneath the dark and woody bands. 

Drink in the flaring, falling skies, 
O youth, until you drown ! 
Drink deep 
Of that blue sweep 
Until it sinks far down 
Into your avid pores and eyes. 

Let the sharp leaves enpierce your soul 
With every sky-cut line. 
And rounding joint 
And arrowy point 
And sun-illumined spine 
And poignant massing of the whole. 

And all the blossoms, youth, take these 
Into your hands and eyes. 



Your touch, your sight, 
With full delight 
And to your nostrils' brimmed surprise. 
Till you are satiate as the bees. 

Take all the tree, from crown to bole. 
All life, O youth, all light. 
Bask on the bough 
Of the blossoming Now, 
Till its beauty is dusked with the night. 
Take life with five-sensed body and soul! 



[23] 



THE GOLDEN FLIES 

I SHALL have none of this, this little love, 

This firefly thing that glints along the earth 

And knows not of the greater flames above, 

This that hath laughter and no dearth 

Of amorous words drawn from antiquity, 

And touch of hands and not the touch of soul. 

If so I cannot have immensity 

As large as skies, communion great and whole, 

A love that goes with splendid fire upwhirled, 

Up to the gates of stars and heaven's extreme, 

Above the insect-flickers of the world. 

Then shall I have no love, but live with dream. 

None shall I have of this, this firefly-flame. 

Flit elsewhere, elfin users of love's name ! 



[24] 



THE CHANGED MOON 

I USED to find you fair, O moon, 

Globed with enchantment, 

Ringed with haunting fire, 

Burning with wonderment. 

Creator of desire. 

Round and romantic, 

Necromantic, 
Drawing all beauty up into the air. 
To spread it with your strange, moon-colored 

hair. 
Nor white, nor gold, nor blue, nor dark, nor 

clear. 
Into the mesmerized atmosphere. 
I used to find you fair, moon. 

My blood ran wildly at the gleam of you, 
Strange phantasies of sight. 
Gold-colored streams and seas 
With fluid crests of light, 
And molten flowers and trees 
And planetary grove and glen 
And floating forms of men 
And Faun trooped to the crystals of my eyes. 
The world took beauty from the haunted skies, 
Absorbed your spirit to the least flower-root, 
Became, O moon, your glamorous, gold 

off-shoot. 
My blood ran flaming at the sight of vou, 
[25] 



To-night I look and find you changed, moon. 

When did your spirit die? 

Only a disc I see 

Set in an empty sky. 

Passed is the mystery. 

When did your spirit die, 

Or was it I? 
I strain to catch the slightest aural light, 
But there is only your clear globe and night, 
No shimmer of a dream, no horn of Faun, 
No fantasy. The aureole is gone. — 
I'll shut the casement to your vacancy, old 
moon. 



[26] 



ENTITY 

Smite, Life, that I may know you well ! 

Let bluebells pelt me with their indigo, 
And summer skies pour down their rain of 
sapphire 

On mine eyes ! Sunsets, 

Blind me with your fierce intensities 

Of golden fires ! Seas, resound within mine 
ears! 

Waves, break your white, thundered foam about 
me! 

Autumn rains, descend in splendor round me; 

Let me feel you lash my body and the hills. 

And drive the crimson leaves from off the trees ! 

Birds, sing poignantly 

Into the yearning silence of mine ears. 

Fill all my frame with your reverberant song. 

And strike your colored wings together in the 
sun! 

Winds, spread out my hair 

Above the tossing meadows. 

Grasses, press my feet with your cool, outstand- 
ing blades. 

Prick me, thorns and brambles, — let me feel the 
sting, 

The fierce solidity of life ! 

Exhale, deep roses ; fill the day with your per- 
fumed existence, 

Let your crimson glory float into my veins ! 

[27] 



Breathe out, low meadow-flowers, 
The sunny spices of your treasury. 

Friend, touch my hand, let me be ware 

Of the great stream of life in you, 

The leaping motion hidden in your limbs ! 

Let me look deep into your eyes. 

Wherein the wheeling stars drop down the image 

of their fires, 
Let me behold your mighty soul ! 

Smite, Life, and let me feel your fires ! 

Smite me even with pain, that all your joys 

May prick the air with sharper sweetness. 

Let me see the blue, bright sky 

Between two twisted trees of pain. 

Let breath of lilacs come to me. 

Enriched on a cloud of suffering. 

Let my ears hear the sharp, sweet morning-song 

of robins. 
Borne on the current of an agony, 
So only. Life, that I may feel your saliency 1 

Smite, Life, with all your flaring essences, 
So pierce your way into my soul 
And bum me with your being, — 
That Death cannot pass through your living 
fire! 



[88] 



THE SONG OF THE UNWEDDED 
WOMAN 

I HAVE come in the dark night, dark earth, 

To lie against you and to seek reply. — 

Why did you bring me up out of your depths. 

From your great fruitfulness, to walk alone? 

I walk apart within a laughing world, 

A world of beautiful dualities. 

All things unite, all men and women join 

To brush your aisles together, side by side. 

And speak and sing in wondrous partnership. 

And bring forth children for your increment. 

But I alone, unfound, unblended, dwell. 

And unproductive in your glad domains. 

All the long, empty day I have withdrawn 

From the blithe songs of birds, for they have 

called 
One to another from the heights of trees 
In amorous antiphonies. — 

And now. 
Even within this darkness I am bruised 
By the soft sound of cricket-castanets 
As they make passion in the underbrush ! 
Why did you bring me up out of your depths, 
Out of your rich plurality, great earth. 
Into this unity of loneliness.? 
I am an error of your fruitfulness. 
I crave to be drawn back into your heart, 
Like all life's wasted seeds and sterile flowers. — 
[29] 



THE SEEMING SEA 

I STAND alone upon the shore. 
The wound net of life enmeshes me. 
As life has made me so I am, 
And so I look upon the sea. 

The blue of waves dwells in my eyes. 
Within my ears the sound is sweet. 
The breath of salt is of my breath. 
The press of sand is of my feet. — 

Could I but know the moving waves 
As beyond the touch they lie, 
And the essence of the shore 
As it seemeth to God's eye! — 

Without bedazzlement of thought, 
Sway of motion, flux of sound. 
Surge of color, sentient flesh. 
Toils of custom tightly wound. 

Free me, — mockery of sense ! 
Shed the color from my sight ; 
Pour the music from my ears ; 
Divest me of the patterned light ! 

So might I stand upon the shore, 
And of the heart of things be ware. 
Knowing if earth and seas be real. 
Or plots of space and tintless air ! 
[30] 



THE MESSAGE 

Message? — Would God I had a roaring 

message, 
And I would shout it lustily like Whitman ! 
Nothing exults as does the flame of faith, 
Mantling the soul and body with hot strength ! 
I too would glow with credent certainty ! 
I would put my yearnings and my faithlessness 
Into a loud cry, a trumpet-song, 
A great, sonorous faith ! — Would God that I 
Could plait the universe into a plan, 
A figured wreath, like other men, and find 
A spruce and pretty pattern in the maze. 
Would I could put my hands upon Design 
And find it firm and cosmic, not man-made. 
Would I could seek out bodies of brave causes, 
Bouquets of beautiful Effects and Ends, 
And Truth and Abstract Beauty and a God, 
Those things which men large-type and under- 
line 
And bring forth from their vision-brimming 

souls. 
I would gather up my tears and mix of them 
A cascade of pure joy. I would gather up 
My frayed and search-worn nerves and fashion 

of them 
A cluster of strength and irrefutability ! 
I would gather up my crescent interrogations 
And wind of them a glorious, golden circle, 

[31] 



Swirling around and around unalterably 
In utter and beautiful completion ! — 

Message? 
Ah you who talk of a message, you are either 

children 
Or angels, I cannot tell which. If I knew of a 

message, 
A message, not a concoction to solace sick souls, 
But a veritable solution, true as the core 
Of a star, I would sing it to the ends of time 

and space! 
How should I make dishonest, hollow compacts 
With my soul ? How should I bravely sing 
What I know not, only because your pale. 
Yearning, anxious ears are distended to listen? 
No ! All I can sing of is what I discern, — 
A few flying, drifting bits of color, 
A few straying sounds, — a little of beauty, 
Much of pain, much of sorrow, some joy, 
Hearts of men dilated with frantic hope, 
Marvelous hearts inured to mortal anguish, 
Marvelous brains up-grown through obstruc- 
tion and darkness. 
Marvelous men, fully as glorious as stars, 
Set in the world to glimpse angelic beauty, 
And die like ephemerae. — Only these frag- 
mentary things, 



[32] 



These colors, 

these sounds, 

these soul-lights, 

these beauties, 

these thoughts. 
Can I sing. — Oh gladly, exultantly would I 

shout 
A confident, puissant pagan ! Had I a message. 
Do you not think I would sing it with ecstasy? 
Do you not think I also yearn for an answer, 
Writhe and thirst and weep and reach for a 

solution ? 
You who long for a man-befitting cosmos. 
Go to some world beyond our universe. 
Heavy and gravid with Purpose, reeking with 

Reason 1 
Bask in gardens of Design, in pools of Plan, 
In circles of Perfectness ! 

Ask me no message 
In this wild, jogging, reckless, irresponsible 

earth. 
Message? — 

I will sing you a few strains from her songs. 
The mad floatings of her minstrelsy. — None 

else. 
I have no message, — and I think she has none ! 



[33] 



THE ANTHEM 

" As it was in the beginning 
Is now and shall forever be.'* — 
So sings the church on bended knee, — 
While the nebulae are spinning ; 

Spinning, spinning into flower. 

Sudden patterns, shifting streams. 

Falling fire and starry shower. — 

New worlds, fresh souls, and undreamt dreams ! 

As they flame and surge and pour. 
On atom-earth the church is singing, — 
" It shall be forevermore 
As it was in the beginning ! " 



[34] 



THE AFTER-SONG 

Why should it be that when I walk with you 

I hide my love and gossamer my words, 

And smile into your face, as light-hearts do? 

But when you leave, my love lifts into space, 
Uprushing into singing syllables, like birds, — 
In beauteous memory of your soul and face ! 



[35] 



INTERLUDE ON MATTER 

It grew outside my door, 
An Autumn-golden tree ; — 
Through my dumb soul it tore 
With rushing ecstasy. 

I laughed, — and paused to dream 
How matter holds us still 
With its refreshing gleam. 
And interweaves our will! 



[36] 



IDLENESS 

I LIE in a pool of idleness, — like a leaf. 

The wind turns up a ripple here and there 

In momentary flame. 

But the ripple returns to the pool, 

Lost in its passionless quiet. 

I stretch out an arm or a thought. 

But complete neither gesture nor dream. 

My thoughts fall back, unformed, 

Into the frail images of the pool. 

The clouds pass and move their whiteness 

Into the water. 

The boughs bend and mirror their sprays 

Of still and poignant leaves. 

No word is spoken. 

No soul interprets. 

I am passive as the mirroring pool. 

I longed once, in my ardent youth, 

To cry out, 

To shape the impinging beauty in words. 

To give new form and being to the crowding 

loveliness ! 
The blue sky burned and sued 
For splendid utterance! 
The leaves pressed into space 
And smote the brain with their swinging 

clusters ! 
The birds dipped in mystic curves. 
[37] 



Even the still water 
Importuned the soul! 

Now I sit with folded arms by the pool. 
Full is the world of the futility of effort. — 
Perchance it is better to dream than to labor. 



[38] 



OF THE STATUE OF BUDDHA 

Calm as the deathless mountains is his face, 
Where brooding quiet sits with giant thought; 
Calm as some planetary sea unsought 
By savage winds ; calm as the sunset space 
That mellows into prayerful night apace ; 
Calm as the desert, with its teeming nought. 
Its unperturbed, concentrate stillness, fraught 
With power ; — calm as some lotus-breathed 

place. 
He is the God of Silence, from closed eyes 
To enervate feet, from Sphinx-like forehead 
To the tangent thumbs, arrayed in silence deep. 
Like fumes of incense it surrounds him, lies 
Close at his heart as life-in-death, — not dead, — 
But rich with thought, as potent life in sleep. 



[39] 



TO THE NIGHT-WIND 

You are my lover, O wind of the night, 
Beautiful, wonderful, cleaving and bright. 
No breath of a mortal might ever compare 
With the sweep of your splendor of measureless 
air. 

Carnal are mortals and slender and small. 
Their thoughts as their bodies are only as tall. 
They slave and they suffer; they lust and they 

die. 
You are the infinite flow of the sky ! 

Take me, wind, In your beautiful gale. 
Yours is the breath that my heart shall inhale. 
Yours the embrace that shall charge me with 

fire, 
Pure of all earthly, all wanton desire. 

Take me, O wind, in your radiant tide. 
Take me, O wind, for your substanceless bride. 
Wind that sweepeth the white stars apart, 
Blow through my spirit, blow through my 
heart ! 

Lift me up out of my being, the mesh 
Of my body, the lure of my flesh. 
Out of man's dreaming. — Efface me in flight. 
You are my lover, O wind of the night \ 
[40] 



SPRING SORROW 

There comes a time in the early Spring of the 

year, 
Before the buds have broken, 
When sorrow lays its hush upon the world. 
In syllables unspoken ; 

Sorrow deep as the spheres of darkened moons. 
The sorrow that blindly knows 
The futility of all unfolding, and the fading 
Of every flower that grows. 

Cool is the earth with the drooping of unspilled 

rain, 
And the imminence of tears. 
The buds lie under the stifling bark of the 

twigs. 
Suppressed with haunting fears. 

The flowers are too deep beneath the fettered 

earth. 
Too closely bound in coil 
To raise the delusion of their beauty 
Above the dreary soil. 

The mighty winds of the Winter have gone 

down. 
No breath of motion stirs. 

All is silence. There is no impulse anywhere. 
Not even a bird's wing whirs. 



Earth is weary of the empty tumult of Winter, 
Weary of the new weight 

That presses against her heart for large re- 
lease, 
Weary of futile freight. 

These buds will blow away in the Autumn twi- 

light, 

Borne on the wind's cold breath. 

These flowers will add the shining of their petals 

To the mould of death. 

The vast, grey tragedy of life lies bare. 

No Spring flowers cover it. 

No network of blossoms hides it from the eyes. 

No light lies over it. 

A sadness, a Spring sadness touches the world, 
The sorrow that blindly knows 
The futility of all unfolding, and the fading 
Of every flower that grows. 



[42] 



A QUERY IN A GARDEN 

I woNDEB, love, when you and I return 
Over the shining passes of the sky, 
After our seeming-death, when we shall yearn 
For just a breath of little plots that lie 

Here on this blessed earth, beneath the moon. 
Where our great love was wrought. I wonder, 

dear. 
Will these same roses burn with flame of noon, 
And shadows of our souls, when we walk here? 

Or will they be to our dead spirit-eyes 
Pale roses, robbed of earth's dear wonderments. 
Or yet, — ah God — will no dim flowers arise. 
And we not walk, — wrapped in our cerements ? 

Come, take my hand, that I may feel the pour 
Of life through you, forgetful of eternity. — 
Love, let us breathe the roses just once more, 
Within the sweet, warm current of — Reality! 



[43] 



CERTITUDE 

The Man Speaks : 
How deep the night is, — with not even a star 

to clutch! 
They say Arcturus is a trillion miles away ; 
And God, — who knows where God is ? — 

Press closer to my touch, 
Beloved, with your sweet body's certainty of 

clay! 



[44] 



THE MIRROR 

A MiSROE on the wall. — 
I saw a maiden pass, 
All eagerly and tall, 
And smile into the glass. 

It was not buoyant youth, 
Nor foolish vanity, 
Nor peacock pride, in sooth, 
Nor soft inanity. — 

But it was Life that stayed. 
And drank its own sweet eyes, 
In figure of the maid, — 
Life in its mortal guise! 



[45] 



VIDE ASTRA 

Say not so briefly that the stars to-night 

Are fair, as if to name them flocks of light, 

Those hosted stars that all unheeded ride, 

Unloved, unsought and unidentified. 

Though they be severed similarities, 

Say not they glint with sameness through the 

trees 
And flash alike before your sightless eyes. 
Say rather that you see blue Vega rise 
To cap the topmost wave of heaven with fire. 
Where flies, bright with her sapphire song, the 

Lyrel 
Say that Arcturus gleams with torrid red. 
And casts the image of his burning head. 
His giant, million-sunned intensity 
Into our minimizing earthly sea. 
As one red spark upon the smitten wave ! 
Say that the Crown, whose perfectness you 

crave. 
That mystic, radiant, half-unfinished Crown, 
Whose candles the deep seas of Heaven cannot 

drown. 
Shines like a nightly promise to your soul. 
Say that over the horizon's bowl 
Most lightly twinkles Berenice's hair, 
In ecstasy of beauty, — madding-fair. 
Say that the Lynx glows watchfully and near, 

[46] 



With burnished eyes, striking your heart with 

fear. 
Then turn, and fear no more ! The white Swan 

brings 
Tranquillity, flying with peaceful wings. 
Serenely, with the starred world, to the west. 
Say that bright Scorpius flashes without rest 
In the warm South, while scorched Antares 

burns 
Upon its heart, and near skies, as it turns, 
Are bubbling with the heat! Say that you see 
Great Pegasus plunge upward recklessly, 
From the abandoned East, and that near by 
Andromeda stands tall in the mid-sky. 
While Perseus arches guarding at her side. 
Then look once more, while the deep heavens 

glide. 
The North holds clusters other than the Bear, 
For there flames Cassiopeia in her floating 

chair. 

Say not, in loveless haste, the stars to-night 
Are fair. Blind joying! Know each leaping 

light! 
Behold each star, embarked in sundered flight. 
Name every flame! Rejoice the soul of sight! 



[47] 



EXPERIENCE 

I DID not know until this bladed day 

That thoughts are flesh and Life a sword, — 

but now 
I could describe the heft, the edge, the play. 
The calibre. — I know what swords are now! 



[4«] 



ATTUNED 

I FEEi. the caU of things that should be told,-— 
The pulse-beat of the earth; the heaven's gold, 
The turning of the wave, the moon's white wing: 
And yet, deep-stirred, I can but songless sing. 
Man is too small to comprehend the whole 
Of God's eternal plan, yet with his soul 
Leaps to the glory of it, in reply; 
Mounts in mute wonder to the star-bright sky, 

Falls back, with mute, ecstatic tongue, 

Yet knows himself a part and Heaven-sprung. 



[49] 



THE SHADOW OF A TREE 

I SIT and mark the shadow of a tree 

With worship, — as it were some holy thing. 

The great sun, onward-sweeping, sends it near 

With indeterminable pace. It moves 

Like the smooth, silent progress of all time, 

Pauseless and profluent and undeterred 

As is the pace of planets in their paths. 

Or the slow passing of the dusk of years 

Across the face of beauty. What may shadow 

Be? — Is it with meaning and with dream. 

Or is it darkness which we fill with dream.? 

Is it a thing of spirit or a void? 

Is it negation or a sombrous veil 

Drawn over the gold body of the light ; 

Or some misplaced, intrusive entity. 

Supplanting the fair element of flame? 

Has it a separate essence of its own. 

Or is it dark withdrawal of all light? 

I sit and mark the shadow of a tree 
With worship, — as it were some holy thing. 
Whatever it may be, it is most strange, 
Most beautiful, most cogent to the soul; 
An obscure aspect of reality, 
A subtle contrast slipped into the world. 
It is a magic offspring of the sun 
A million miles of reaching light away, 
And of the present, overhanging branches 
[50] 



Of an earthly tree ; — child of the marriage 
Of celestial flame and earth's dark substance. 
Yet it is not dark nor flame nor loss of light, 
But wrought of many tints and elements, 
Rich purples, deep as shadows in Greek tombs, 
And flickerings of grass-and-tendril green. 
And blues of seas and streams and greys of 

cloud 
And shimmering hints of softly-kindled gold. 
It is more luminous than light itself. 
My eyes swim with the worship as before a 

flame ! 

This is the stuffs which gives the world its shape, 
Which sets the contrast in the house of space, 
Draws color out, by mating it with night. 
Swerves contours into rounding reach, makes 

curves. 
Gives vista, distance and solidity ; 
So, wrapping its dark presence round the earth. 
Educes beauty, — rears Reality ! 
This hints all other shadows, seen and felt. 
Shadows of dusk and dawn, the dark eclipse 
Of moons, shadows of flying wings. 
Shadows of clouds across chameleon seas. 
Shadows of lifted hills and slender flowers. 
Shadows of faces, shadows of human lives. 
All shadows strewn through the great world of 

light. 
This holds the token of all mystery, 
[51] 



The dark, the hidden, the occult, the strange, 

All things which summon and provoke the soul, 

And draw the spirit from the manifest 

To the dim vistas of the undefined, 

Where lurks the magic of the possible ! 

This is the portal to the unexplored! 

Cross once the gates of shadow and the world 

Of death-past-life is gained. This is the 

door ! — 
Who looks at shadow looks at miracle. 

With worship, as it were some holy thing 
I sit and mark the shadow of a tree. 



[52] 



MAGIC MOONLIGHT 

In this white chamber of the moon, 
This earthly anteroom of light, 
This magic memory of noon. 
Enchanted sleep the songs of night. 

The enraptured breeze, with elfin leap. 
Brushes the leaves in silent sound ; 
The crickets whisper from their sleep 
Of charmed rays upon the ground. 

The pensive owl, with rippled troll. 
Murmurs fantastic, moon-mad lore, 
Like silver dreams from Circe's bowl 
The waves drip softly on the shore. 



[53] 



INSULATION 

Theee are spaces in my soul, O my beloved, 
Which you have never entered nor approached, 
Nor found the gates unto. — We are alone. 
We meet and merge in a few areas. 
And hear each other's dreams go by beyond, 
Unique and questing through the universe. 
Passionately I crave your supplementing 

thoughts, 
In some vast things, yet find no answering 
In you to my philosophy. Only 
In some stray passages I brush your thought. 
Some few small, sheltered crannies of the 

mind. — 
Yet they are sweet for our encounter there. 
And you, who knows what passages in you 
I fail to find, what undreamed, spreading 

tracts } 
Strangely, I thought that love discharged all 

needs, 
Filled up the intervals, supplied the voids. 
Furnished what friendship and what fondness 

missed. 
Perfected hope, made want and yearning whole, 
O'erbrimmed the vacancies, surcharged the soul. 
That there was glad replenishment, content, 
Superfluence, sufficiency at last, 
Impletion of the uttermost desire! 

[54] 



I did not dream that love was loneliness. 
I dreamed that love was fusion, perfectness. 

If this be love, then this is tragedy. 

In which our partial union aggravates 

Our souls' disunity. — Coming so near. 

We trace the distant ranging of our thoughts, 

As the tangent points of two touch-shouldered 

circles 
Feel the attendant lines slip swerving off 
Into a curved and vast divergency. — 
Is there no being in this teeming world 
With whom I may as crescent clasped to cres- 
cent 
Join, in perfect circularity, — 
Not tangent only, but completely wed, 
In body and in spirit and in mind ? — 
And you, should you not find your crescent too ^ 

Must we go lonely to our parted deaths, 

And incomplete and hungering through the 

years ? 
Life is but yearning, then, and even love 
Fills not the yawning chasm of our search.? 
Beloved, if we are wed in body, even, 
We shall be sundered, disespoused in soul.'' 
If death gives surcease to impassioned search. 
Why should I live to find the flaws in love.'' — 

I dreamed that love was fusion, perfectness ! 
I did not dream that love was loneliness. 
[65] 



ON THE SHORE 

I LIE on the warm, gold sand beneath the sky, 

My eyes look up through the wind-blown sword- 
grasses, 

The sun-steeped, gold-bladed, green-swaying 
sword-grasses. 

Up through the golden omnipresence of the sun- 
shine. 

Up past the white-sailing gulls, the clear, white 
gulls 

That stab the sunshine with their snowy wings, 

And glide like slow, poising curvate arrows 

On the invisible currents of the floating wind. 

Up, up to the blue, still heights. 

Up to the everlasting background of the sky! 

At my feet the sea roars with a thunderous din, 
The blue, white-furrowed waves rush in upon 

the shore 
With their running burden of shining, saffron 

sand. 
They burst in a whirlpool of flashing, oncoming 

foam. 
The foam bubbles dancingly up ; the shore sips 

it thirstily. 
In the light of the golden sun. The blue wave 

recedes. 



[56] 



To be borne in over and over again, by new 

strength, 
A perpetual procession and recession ! 

There is infinite change 
At my feet and infinite calm overhead. — 

Withal, 
I cannot decide which is the more majestic! 



[57] 



INTO A ROOM 

Though his thoughts have been riding the wind, 

Or shouting between the stars, 

His ecstasies unbind 

And his soul puts up its bars 

When he enters a peopled room. 
His eyes turn skyless and small. 
And fill with a curtained gloom. 
And the peaks of his gladness fall. 

The curves of his body shrink 
From the spaces of the skies 
And his hill-wide gestures sink — 
To the reach of human size. 

His voice that has throbbed in his throat 
With the splendid clamor of seas 
Falls chimeless and far remote 
And the flame of his spirit flees. 

Why, why are we full afraid 
To cherish the moods that loom. 
And lest our rapture invade, 
Subdue ourselves to a room? 



[68] 



SUCCESS 

I HEAED one say : I lay within the night, 
When mortal triumph caught me in its flight, 
Bewildered, filled with flashing song unheard, 
Each atom brisk within me as a bird! 

My thoughts were fire, my breath a colored 

draught. 
Within my mind a thousand echoes laughed, 
A thousand flowers sent out their perfumed 

spray, 
A thousand satyrs danced, — I saw them sway. 

The world grew narrow like a little ball 
And tumbled in my room, from wall to wall, — 
Until I took the world and cast it far. 
Rose up, — and went to meet the morning- 
star. — 



[59] 



DEFEAT 

The light of new defeat shines in his eyes, 

Yet will his future deeds deserve men's note. 

There stands the victor, smug with feigned sur- 
prise, 

Blind joy and suave speech trickling in his 
throat. 

The victor knows not joy. He is but mad 
With the dark wine, — success ! His is no 

dream. 
The vanquished hides the latent flower, full glad 
To check his bloom, until approval beam. 

Uncrushed, alert with hampered, straining 

power, 
Potential, whipped to action, stung to strength 
By bloated foes and scomers of his dower, — 
Defeat will laugh, sing, and achieve at length! 



[60] 



THE CLOAK 

Though I do say it 
You do wear a cloak 
Across your thoughts, — there. 
'Tis a blinding joke, 

Mortalia. See, 
I cannot glimpse your soul, 
The cloak's so dense. — There, 
Yes, a spark of soul, 

Deep down in water. 
Like a drowning child. 
Ah, snatch it out now, — 
'Tis a likely child! 

The cloak is stifling. 
Your big eyes are wide 
With great thoughts, longings. 
Hidden deep for pride. 

" 'Tis a lovely day," 
You said. " Lovely," " Fair,"— 
God's gold day stamped thus ? 
No more than, — fair ? 

Look. Between the clouds 
Eternity ! Stay ! 
There the gold stars beat 
Past the gates of day. 
[61] 



You see no star-light 
Through the daylight whirled? 
Your words you keep, then, 
In the solar world? 

You say " Good-morning," 
With a slippery air, 
" Farewell," " Good-evening," 
With your self elsewhere. 

As if it were not 
Wonderful to greet. 
Great God ! — A miracle 
When two,— souls, — meet I 

We all are faulty. 
Making great things naught. 
Pygmies. Hypocrites. 
Bottlers of spreading thought ! 

Friends, draw off your cloaks, 
I mine. We will aspire 
To truth and light. 
For we hide, — cosmic fire ! 



[62] 



TO AN EGYPTIAN MAIDEN 

O GIRL of Egypt, as we strive and dream, 
And probe the vasty secrets we would know. 
Are we more wise than you, beside the stream, 
Who filled the lotus with your thought, so long 
ago? 



[63] 



THE ROSE OF NOW 

ROSE, rich with the color of this hour, 

The poignant perfume of Time's latest flower, 

1 fold within your petals, deep and wide, 
And full with the sweet plunge of life, the pride 
And vivid, glowing gladness of this day. 

I add the rainbow sparkle of the spray 
Freed from the crested wave of newest birth, 
The glint of the last sunbeam bounding to the 

earth, 
The joy of all new buds on the great bough, 
The surging of the great, potential Now, 
The essence of all things that now are young 
And shall be quickly old when Youth is sung. 
Take all my vibrant youth, my shining strength, 
My thoughts that thread the heaven's starry 

length 
And burn their way into the singing Lyre 
Beneath blue Vega, and the whirling fire 
Of the gold Pleiades, with that swift flame 
Of unquenched hope, in every human soul the 

same. 
Take these into your living leaves and close 
Your heart around them. Keep them there, 

O rose. 

Then, when at length the germinative Now 
Has fruited into Past, and the blue prow 
Of all those distant waves has broken into spray, 
[64] 



Then, when my youth has slipt away 

To that dim treasure-house where the sweet 

Past 
And all its retinue is kept. Then, then at last 
When I shall look at you in other wise. 
With tender, dim and reminiscent eyes, — 
Give back, O rose, from your frail, desiccated 

heart. 
Your grey and fragile leaves, your spirit-heart. 
Give back O rose, the magic crimson flower 
Of Now, the throbbing beauty of this hour ! 



[65] 



THE DISSEMBLER 

God, teach me the serviceable art 

Of hiding sorrow well, 

Deep in the utmost caverns of the heart. 

To-day I found grief rising to my eyes, 

Dimming the well-feigned light, 

And to my lips, where crescent laughter lies. 

Methought that pain crept from the soul of me 

And sat upon my face. 

And it and I were odious to see. 

Help me to cover from the world's sharp sight 

My bitterness. 

And smile, until Death sets the mask aright. 



[66] 



SHE BENDS ABOVE A FLOWER 

In the garden at moon-hour, 
Before dead darkness had slipped down, 
I saw her come with trailing gown, 
And lightly bend above a flower. 

Vast beauty of that earthly place ! — 
Above the stem and fragrant bowl, 
A burning breath, a human soul, — 
Sprung from the nescient seeds of space. 

Between the petals and the moon, 
A face, a consciousness, a soul. 
A mystic mirror of the whole, 
Between the petals and the moon. 



[67] 



MORNING 

Why does the world spring up so blithely at 
the mom, 

Exuberant with purpose, setting its face 
towards the light, 

As if there were wonders to achieve? 

The leaves rustle with fresh merriment, the birds 
sing with ecstasies not yet fulfilled, 

The clouds dance onwards as if to a goal. 

The sun climbs with splendid advance. 

And man, deluding himself, laughs and plans ! — 

But what has the sunset achieved. 

And what signifies the song sung in the morn- 
ing? 

O gods that drive the little earth on in its path. 

Tell me why all things laugh, at the dawn, 

And I will cast out the mistrust from my heart. 

And make music with the cardinal-birds ! 



[68] 



THE SUN-GRAIL 

I SAW the Holy Grail 
Hang crimson in the sky, 
Just as the day grew pale. 
I saw the Holy Grail 
Across my spirit sail. 
" It was the sun," you cry. 
I saw the Holy Grail 
Hang crimson in the sky. 



[69] 



PASSION 

You came too swiftly, with too clamant cries, 
Too eager to break down my spirit's bars ! 
You were all tempest, with no glimpse of skies, 
Low-running blaze, without a shaft of stars. 

You knew not love ; — the mystery, the calm. 
The pregnant pause, the mutual awe, the fair, 
Sweet hesitance, the bended knee, the psalm. 
The reverence, the vision and the prayer. 

Some flowers will blast, not bend, when wild 

winds roar. 
You were a flame, a storm, a gale of power ! 
Your love was passion. — Love is vastly more. — 
So I came not to be your prostrate flower. 



[70] 



TO A WOMAN IN HER GARDEN 

WOMAN, what dost thou do in thy garden 
all day, 
Sowing, sowing, sowing? 
What will the sun yield thee and the winds and 
the waters grey. 
Blowing, blowing, blowing? 

Is it for the flowers, the sheer, bright beauty of 

flowers 
That thou givest through all the days the 

stream of thine hours? 

O woman, look to the depths of thy soul, deep 

down, 
Then leap back up to earth, lest in horror thou 
shouldst drown. 

There shalt thou see the starkness of life, 
the pain. 
Knowing, knowing, knowing 
Wherefore with bright flowers thou fiUest the 
spaces inane, — 

Sowing, sowing, sowing! 



[71] 



CONTENTMENT 

When shall I be content, — content 
To sit at the white feet of dawn 
In nnimpatient wonderment 
And pray no future be forth-drawn? 

Content to watch the day unfold 
In shifting subtleties of light, 
And ask no blessing of its gold, 
Content to wait for stars and night ? 

When shall I cease to press my dream 
Into Life's slow development. 
And crave no splendor of the stream? - 
When shall I be content, content? 



[72] 



THE POET TO HIS BODILY 
INSTRUMENT 

I AM tired of sitting with my fleshless thoughts, 
In the dim tissues of the mind. Not Life 
Dwells here, but the faint vestiges of Life, 
Fetched from the throbbing centres of the 

world. 
How should they keep their ruddy essences 
And not grow white like ghosts .'* — being 

brought in 
To darkness out of light, to a small void 
Out of the brimming beauty of the earth? 
How should they keep their life, their entity.'' 
Here is faint duplication of the world. 
And not the world ! — 

Up, up and out, live body. 
Up to meet the contacts of event. 
And re-engage the flagging animal ! 
Up to meet fresh impacts and fresh blows, 
And send new streams of beauty through the 

blood! 
Re-charge the soul, re-vivify the flesh ! 
Better to let one tree invade the eyes. 
With unsymbolic, living, ligneous trunk, 
And vital branches and green, urgent leaves 
And press its way into percipience 
Then fashion fleshless concepts in the soul I 
Take trees and faces, flowers and circumstance. 
The flail of life, the scourge, — experience ! 

[73] 



Up, up and out, brave body, to the day. 
Lift up the flaming mirrors of the eyes. 
Throw wide the ears' reverberant corridors, 
Intensify and sensitize the touch ! 
Let the seas flood you and the earth oppress! 
Make way into the real, the corporal world. 
From whose resources all the thoughts are made. 
And from whose plenum rises the clear soul ! 



[74] 



LAUGHTER 

The child in the door-yard paused in play, 

Looked up and scattered a golden spray 

Of purest laughter through the heart of day. 

The woman heeded her work and smiled, 
Then caught the glory of the undefiled, 
And laughed with pain-touched gladness at the 
child. 

The rose in the meadow is fair 

With its petals unfolded there. 
But there grows a rose with a cup more deep 
Where the thorn-heavy flowers in the garden 
sleep. 

The brook in the meadow is sweet 

With its sun-shod, laughing feet. 
But the wave that tosses its heart in the sea 
Sings a song of more haunting melody ! 



[75] 



ORION 

Now, now am I full ready to pass out 

Upon the great winds of infinity. 

I have seen, in the pause of the midnight, 

Orion flashing his sword above the earth ! 

Day by day the rolling planet flieth 

Beneath his sky-path. I think his glory 

Would brush mine eyes, would strike them full 

awake 
Were I under that film of earth-surface 
Which men, with fearsome faces, call the 

grave, — 
Fancying that it shuts out the flaming soul 
Prom its companion-fires of the universe ! 



[76] 



IN PRAISE OF SCULPTURE 

Theee is no art like this. 

All else is void, 
All else is substanceless and vague and pale 
As empty voices fainting in the wind. 
Music pours out her swiftly-flowing notes 
And they are gone. Of her no traces live. 
She moves the yearning spaces with a song, 
A spreading ripple of blue air, a stir. 
And silence closes over the last swell. 
Art flashes into being for a trice 
With little painted plots that lightly dance 
And quiver in the tiny eyes of men. 
Until Time sweeps across his moon-grey hand 
And draws away the color and the life. 
Words flicker foolishly among the winds 
Without or form or shape or entity, 
The transient syllables of passing thought, 
That take new patterns as the races die. 

These statues, these are flung into the world 
To live, — until the last man lays him down 
Along the age-worn earth beneath the moon ! 
These are the shape, the very life of life. 
They need no rendering in viewless words, 
No sign, no utterance, for they are words 
In clay, inhabitants of shining space. 
Formed of the throbbing fingers, clear to the 
eyes 

[77] 



As carven moons, strong to the touch as rock. 
Tall, white, indubious, solid, strong. 
Corporeal against the splendent sky ! 
Poetry in stone. Soul inwrought with clay. 
Embodied vision. Shafts of immortal thought ! 



[78] 



IN A CORRIDOR OF STATUES 

They crowd about me, close and white and still, 
These statues. On their lips is vocal silence. 
They frighten me with the depth of their un- 
spoken wisdom 
And with the vast presences of spectral 

thoughts floating 
In the white, un-pupiled spaces of their eyes. 
They look down upon me with the penetration 

of Sphinxes. 
It seems as if in the depths of their soulless clay 
They held all the secrets which my living soul 

knows not. 
Yet for a moment, a sunlit while, I rise 
Above their white perpetuity ! 
I am rosy with life, dancing in the current of 

motion ! 
Their stillness vivifies my strength, my power. 
For a little the great world is mine completely. 
The Faun, chained whitely in his marble statue. 
Yearns to leap out into the world with me. 
He would rush, singing for joy, with me, down 

the street. 
King Arthur strains to march out into the city 
With his sword and his buckler, and his eyes 

filled with the Grail. 
But they are fast in their cases of clay, and I 

am free. 

[79] 



I will walk forth with the borrowed strength of 

their mastery. 
I will walk on and on, until my gladness, my 

motion, my life. 
Are sealed like theirs in the silent wisdom of 

clay. 
I will walk forth with the life-giving power of 

their beauty ! 



[80] 



VANITA SPEAKS 

I ONCE was fair, — as morning light. 
I once was lithe, — as bending tree. 
I walked with splendor in man's sight, 
And watched all faces fill with me, 

And brighten like a sunset sea. 

Where'er I passed. — Now comes the night. 

I walk alone in mystery. 

With changed beauty on the height. 



[81] 



THE QUARREL 

A STORM swept in and drove us out with pain 
From the still lake of peace, to the two poles, 
And their dark, severed seas. Our drifted souls 
Dreamed not that they should meet or merge 
again. 

But the great tides of being, full and vast, 
And our deep yearnings urged and pressed and 

drove. 
Until our mountainous waters reached the stars, 

and strove 
And climbed, — then flooded back, star-brimmed, 

at last. 

Tumultuous, towards each other, with desire! 
Then, huge, gigantic, with a larger lease 
We made our way to the still lake of peace, 
And found it small for our great, fluid fire ! 

As tides drawn out, seek back their basin-forms 
With cumulative swell and pour and surge. 
So we returned with vaster, passionate urge. 
And vehemence of love ! — 

Praise God for storms ! 



[83] 



A CRY 

Flame till I am one with all the skies, 
O blazing stars. 

Tomorrow death may darkly seal my eyes; 
Bum, oh stars ! 



[83] 



SURFACE SNOW 

You thought me cold and never came to know. 
For with strange pride I feigned frigidity. 
Around my heart I heaped the whitened snow 
And swirled the currents of the Northern Sea. 

Up to my eyes I drew indifference 
Lest my own face should tell my heart its tale, 
And bore myself from the least lure of sense 
That my false firmness might not faint or fail. 

I hid from the bright worship of your eyes, 
And from the sound and song and words of you. 
As from great lightning a gull lifts and flies 
So past the fervor of your love I flew. 

From the least touch I sheered myself apart. 
For had you brushed me with a single hand 
The snows had vanished, and revealed my heart ! 
So you went on, and did not understand. 



[84] 



PETALS 

I BADE you go and take love with you as you 

went, 
Denying you all lodgment in my heart. 
I shed light laughter on the flowers you sent, 
And closed the path into my house and heart. 

Only the gods, my soul in its profoundest deep, 
And the frail ghosts of a few roses, wan and 

spent, 
Know how I loved you and how close I keep. 
With tears, all laughterless, the flowers you 

sent. 



[85] 



UNCLOAKED 

Do you remember, you, who long ago 

Asked me to draw the clinging cloak that hid 

My thoughts? You said I wore a clinging 

cloak 
About my heart and soul. — And so I did. 

But at this latter day, too late for joy, 
Yet not too late for peace, I will unwear 
The cloak and slipping it from my soul away 
Let you look in upon your imprint there. 

Behold, how much I loved you. — Is it plain 
At last ? — Then, let us draw the cloak again. 



[86] 



THE DANCER AND THE DAWN 

'TwAs at a dance. You said I slighted you. 
I tossed my head and smilingly denied. 
You said, " I go, I will not wend with you." 
" 'Tis well. Farewell," I carelessly replied, 

And sent a spray of laughter as you went. 

All night I danced and gave away my smiles, 

All night I danced, and burned with wonder- 
ment, 

I flamed with ardor, scorched men with my 
wiles. 

And brimmed them with my laughter. I was 

mad 
With youth, with ecstasy, with power, with 

play! 
I thought that I could nevermore be sad. 
That I could dance forever and a day ! 

Dawn came. — The dancers fled away. 
I fared into my house, but not to sleep. 
I fell upon my knees, but not to pray. — 
I fell, fire-spent, to yearn for you and weep. 



[87] 



BEFORE THE DUSK 

I WOUI.D give all the burnings of the noon, 
The shimmering sweetness of the dawning day, 
Yea, even all the wonders of the moon, 
If, dying now, I might re-find my way. 

Each sun-down, from the paths of death, 
To this brief hour before the falling dusk. 
Then would I ever with fierce, mortal breath 
Meet this same scent of meadows, warm with 
musk, 

Find these same shadows gathered on the earth. 
These shadows deeped with splendor of the 

light. 
All rich with promise of the day's rebirth, 
Before the immitigable gloom of night. 

Now is life full and maximal and clear* 
Perfect, by its own beauty justified. 
Earth melts into the skies and God seems near, 
And all the universe beatified. 

I would give stars and burnings of the noon, 
The shimmering sweetness of the dawning day, 
Yea, even all the wonders of the moon. 
If to this beauty I might find my way ! 



[88] 



THE TURNED BLADE 

Once, long ago, I spoke sharp words to you 
To speed you from my heart with a swift pace. 
You have forgotten, though the sword thrust 

through 
And gave you wounding for a little space. 

You have forgotten. You have found new day, 

New faces and a pangless heart. 

New hands and eyes have drawn your love 

away, — 
But I sit, with fierce memory, apart. 

For since that day the relic of the sword has 

lain 
Within my hands, so close I cannot fling 
It forth, so sharp I cannot lose the pain, 
Nor shift to other thoughts, nor smile, nor sing. 

And it has seemed of late as if towards me 
The blade were turning, to fulfill my lot. 
And give me death. So cruel is memory, 
So strong ! — Yet I am glad you have forgot. 



[89] 



FLAME AND SHADOW 

I AM young 
And I was singing, 
In a flame of rapture springing, 
With mj reaching arms upflung. 
And my feet with laughter winging ! 

Ecstasy 
Was I and gladness 
Full of triumph, far from sadness, 
With my life upcoursing through me, 
Full of mirth and merry madness ! 

Sudden, — as a shadow sweeping 
Came a thought upon my leaping. 
Thought of death and endless sleeping. 

Through the surging flame it tore. 
Through my lighted eyes it bore. 

Into my singing throat it sprang. 
Into my arms it plunged its fang. 

Down through all my body gay. 
Till the lifting heels gave way. 

I am young 
And I was singing. 
In a flame of rapture swinging, 
[90] 



When a shadow overhung 

And my heart left off its ringing. 

Those who lie 
In death declining 
Have strange thoughts and strange repining. 
Why, oh gods of blackness, why 
Send the shadow to the shining.? 



[91] 



SLEEP 

Slip through the loop of sleep with rne. 

From the giant world and its bruising ways, 
To meadows of mildness and fields of haze, 
Where nothing is real and all is a dream. 
And eternity lies like a silver stream ! 

There the soul unlearns in the truce of the brain 
The evil of life and the pungent pain, 
The pattern of things and the plan and the plot. 
All is soft-loosened and sweet-forgot. 

Slip through the loop, nor shall we return 
To the world, where hot colors seethe and burn, 
Where angles sharpen and objects pierce 
And sounds are brutal and passions fierce. 

From earth and her moon let us journey far 
And the night that lies between star and star. 
To the simple pastures of tender sleep, 
Clement, unwounding, dim, dream-deep! 

Slip through the loop of sleep with me! 



[92] 



A PRAYER 

When over that abyss I pause at last, 

Called Death, the temporary stay 

Twixt life and life's successor, — then when fast 

My soul resolves itself like spray 

Swirled from the firm companion-rock of 
sense, — 

Be with me, Christ, with your strong recom- 
pense. 

When my dim spirit wavers in the dark. 

And moves from the white gates of flesh, 

The throbbing caves of sound where sings the 

the lark, 
The rosy fingertips, the mesh 

Of life, the dazzling mirrors of the eyes, 

Be with me, Christ, and bid my soul arise. 

When, in that hour, my selfhood sinks away 
Beneath the palpitating screen 
Of sense, and struggles with the clod of clay 
Fear-spent, to be as it has been. 
Trembling before the strange, eternal sea,— 
Be with me, Christ, with your eternity. 



[93] 



SPRING STARS 

Spring mil break to-morrow. 
Spring is in the skies! 
Stars that love the morrow 

In the East arise. 

Tremulous of xvvng. 

Winter puissance, Winter storm, 
With Orion's giant form, 
Sink below the Western ford, 
Where he feebly swings his sword. 

Arcturus' eye is full awake. — 
To-morrow arbutus will break, 
And robins the green South forsake. 

Scorpius simmers now. 
Bright, below the East. 
Summer hastens now. 

Beating at the East, 

Where the gold stars sing. 

Roaring Taurus thunders past. 
West with Winter's blowing blast. 
Pegasus lies in his shrouds. 
Among the dying, starry crowds. 

The Swan rides in the trees to-night. 
To-morrow they will burst with light, 
And glow with unsheathed blossoms bright. 
[94] 



Spring will break to-morrow. 
Spring is in the skies! 
Stars that love the morrow. 

In the East arise. 

Tremulous of wing. 

Summer dreams within the flower, 
Spring is bursting buds with power. 
Spring will break to-morrow mom, 
Spring among the stars is bom ! 

Lo! Vega looks with ardent eyes.— 

To-morrow viblets will rise. 

And bluebirds sail in sapphire skies ! 



[95] 



THE ACOLYTE 

I ONCE held place within your thought 
Where now are other shrines. 

But I could see such treason wrought, 
And ask no other signs, 

If I might know that in your heart 

You visit memory, 
And sometimes dream and fare apart 

To that old shrine of me. 



[96] 



A WIFE TO HER HUSBAND 

Oh, see me not among these chattel-things, 
These little window-pots and curving chairs. 
And dusty shelves and pygmy furnishings, 
These stooping walls and trodden floors and 
stairs. 

I am not wrought of these, though all my ways 
Have moved among them, small and ventureless ; 
Though all my hours have touched them through 

the days. 
And they have crushed my deeds to littleness. 

Though thou hast seen my body harbored here, 
Anchored and moored within this little place, 
Think not my soul is tethered to this gear. — 
My selfhood is not tangent to this space. 

Canst thou not see me now as full of dream 
As in old days of fancy and of fire.? — 
How should my spirit dispossess the gleam. 
The spacious wandering, the vast desire.? 

Come, rend the daily web of circimistance. 
And see me, O my love, with freshened eyes ! 
Walk with my soul, in ways of young romance, 
Among the vast and unadventured skies. 



[97] 



THE TWO 

They are walking in the dusk 
Down the city's narrow street. 
They are arm-in-arm and smiling, — 
Thinking love is wholly sweet. 

As the city hovers over 
With its chimneys and its gloom 
So the future lifts in darkness, 
But they do not see it loom. 

She does not think of anguish. 
Nor of how his strong embrace 
Will fill her frame with travail, — 
So she smiles into his face. 

She does not think of struggle 
Nor the drudgings of a wife. 
Nor of duties sempiternal. 
Nor the three-score years of life. 

Nor does he think of burdens, 
Nor the toiling of his flesh. 
Till he lose his soul and body 
In the suffocating mesh. 

Nor does he think of labor. 
Nor of wheels and mills and plying, 
Nor of worry and oppression 
Till there come the day of dying. 
[98] 



They do not see the sorrow, 
Nor the tidal rush of tears, 
Nor the loss of each one's rapture. 
Nor the dull, drab line of years. 

They are walking in the dusk. 
Thinking love is wholly sweet. — 
Oh, send a little prayer for them 
To the empty Judgment-Seat! 



[99] 



THE ANOMALY 

I DANCED across the meadows yesternoon ; 
The glory of the day withdrew too soon ; 
I drained the brimming goldenness of sight, 
I danced, a swaying torch, a wave of light ! 

At end of day beneath the stars I ran, 
Myself a star, caught in the flaming span. 
I drank the blue, blue wine of Vega's fire. 
I heard the music of the spinning choir ! 

At dawn I rose to kiss the waking Day, 
Down the soft, flowering slopes I made my way. 
With unspilt strength, with life's unopened 

dream ! 
And lo, I found you, — Death, — beside the 

stream. 



[100] 



FANCY 

Give me not wisdom that dissects the flower 
And stoops above a rounded, dreaming pool 
Discerning rajs reflected by some rule ; 
That with steel pointers tells the golden hour, 
And chains the crystal magic of a shower ; 
That squeezes Nature into man's poor school 
And makes her majesty his puppet-tool, 
Depriving her of all her reachless power ! 
Give me the light and unimprisoned flight 
That journeys on the pathway of a star 
More swift than science, on a fleeter wing. 
And threads with unpretentious love the night. 
The glamorous day, the world; and passes far 
Into the mystic heart of everything ! 



[101] 



LOVE LIFE, BUT NOT TOO MUCH 

Love life, but not too much, for it will slay you 
as you sing ! 

Love it and laugh and play and glimpse and 
touch, but do not cling, 

For as you cleave in ecstasy, deep darkness 
rends the light. 

And as you love the more, more black and an- 
guished is the night. 

Love life and meet it lightly, with awareness in 

your eyes. 
Seeing where on the slopes of Spring a shadow 

lies. 
Love life, but not too much, with open sight, an 

even breath, 
A sound of mirth, — and a white, uncovered 

breast for the sword of death ! 



[102] 



THE FALSE FACE 

What are you doing down there, face of my 

flesh, 
Making the same deft patterns, the same apt 

lines ? 
The same white-glinting smiles, the facile curves 
Of quick reply, the runnels for light laughter, 
The old responsive rayings of the eyes? 
Yes, you were thrust and shapen to the world 
Of bone and flesh and shrewd motility 
And race-old habit and the present need. 
You cannot move in any other wise. 
Though all the thoughts be brooding in the 

mind. 
Though tears be at the neap-tide in its bays, 
Though there be heaviness in every curve, 
And lagging at each fold and nerve. 
Though there be mortal weariness diffused 
Through the vast, inner soul, your face must 

lift. 
And make its smiles, despite the irony. 
The bitter, the sardonic thought, — must flash, 
Up-curve its mouth, make gay its musing eyes. 
Give forth through laughing lips the jaunty jest 
And with some section of the mind make words. 
If this were not, the world would dub you mad. 

Oh, for some little time, to dwell unf alse 
Within the candid darkness of one's soul ! 

[103] 



IN A GROVE 

If I within this grove my days should spend, 
Where sunlight falls with such unsaddened gold, 
And leaves are green and young, and naught is 

old. 
And streams sing on and know no muted end. 

Were I to stay here through each day and 

night. 
And feast upon this loveliness of things. 
The permanence of trees, the flow of wings. 
The laughter of the wood, the deathless light, — 

Might not my youth forget to slip away, 

And life dwell with me always, stripped of 

fear? — 
How should death cast his shadow here, 
Where so much endlessness and beauty stay ? 



[104] 



AN ANSWER 

If I marry you, dear lad, 
You will lose the look of wonder, 
It will vanish from your eyes. 
Its beauty will go under. 
And its light will not re-rise. 

You will look at me as husband, 
Wonted, wonderless of sight. 
Blind and quiet and accustomed, 
Calm and passionless as night. 

Starry youth will slip away, 
Love and light surprise. 
Oh, I would not dark the ray 
That marvels in your eyes. 

I would keep their light forever 
And the present flame they carry. 
Till my soul and body sever ! — 
All the wonder would not tarry 
If I married you, dear lad. 



[105] 



FUTILITY 

I CRUSHED the roses in my hand, 
To save them from the breath of Time. 
Time breathed with instant reprimand 
From the dead perfume of my crime ! 



[106] 



TO A SOUL UNPREJUDICED 

This song I sing straight to the soul of you, 
The soul of you, deep down beneath the pride! 
Since the dark day when I bade you depart 
And found repentance when your footsteps 

passed, 
You have looked ever at me with harsh eyes, 
More dark than burned wood with the flame 

withdrawn. 
Your pride has charged your soul check well its 

fires 
As you have vowed a vow most fierce and strong 
Never again to let a spark upleap ! 
So I, likewise, am deep within my pride. 
And dare not yield to summon you again. 
We are world's beings, so, wrapped round about 
The blazing core with heaped complexities. 
Defences deep and strong, pride, self-respect. 
Timidity, esteem, those subtle faculties 
Which age-long intercourse has builded well 
About the too stark and outstanding soul. 
If you and I were pristine and unf alse 
We would leap towards each other, past resent- 
ment. 
Like two stars ! 

But no, your present attributes 
And mine, gathered from the long centuries. 
Our dignities, our flushed nobilities. 
Our massive honor will maintain their hold 
[107] 



And keep us severed as the sun and moon. 
You will go jour way and I mine, apart, 
Though our deep spirits yearn unceasingly 
Each towards the other. Is it not laughable.'^ 
Is it not tragic as the jest of life.'' 
I can not speak with you, nor you with me, 
Nor may I bear into your soul my thoughts, 
For stood we now together, face to face. 
The darkness would swoop down and change 

our eyes, 
The pattern of our visage and our words. 
Plunging the truth below among the fires 
We hide so well. We should at once be strange ! 

This being so, I sing this song to you. 
Whose purport my own lips would not betray. 
Straight to your soul my soul forthsings it now ! 
Down past the you of salon and of street, 
Down past the crust of artifice and pride, 
Down to the you that was before and is 
And shall be when we meet within the stars ! 
Read it, O soul, beneath the prejudice. 
Read it and know, for the whole song is, — love. 



[108] 



THE BURNT OFFERING 

Did you not guess it was for love of you 

I caused you less instead of greater pain ? 

I saw how your bright passion waxed and grew, 

And knowing that this might only bring us bane, 

I took my heart in sudden, desperate wise 
And covered it, and crushed it with constraint, 
And, holding my hands before my yearning eyes. 
Lest I should see your beauty and grow faint, 

I said, " Depart. I love you not." — My gate 
Struck open, — and you went. Your face was 

dazed. 
But your surprise grew to a sudden hate. 
And the fierce fires of enmity forth-blazed. 

Hate me! For I would rather suffer this. 
Than have you suffer for my love. Your ire 
I take, your hatred, — and account them bliss. 
See how I stand as to a forest-fire ! 

Sear me and scorch and cauterize and brand ! 
I take your hate as if you came to woo 
With flame! Beloved, do you not under- 
stand ? — 
I give my life, — burnt offering for you. 



[109] 



THE COQUETTE REGENERATED 

I WAS until these days what the world names 
" Coquette," a blithe and uncompassionate child, 
A little salamander in the flames, 
Unburned but burning, conscienceless and wild. 

There came to me one beautiful as prayer. 
I wove my spell and took away his breath. 
I thrust me deep into his heart, so fair, 
I thrust me down, — until I drew his death. 

Ah, God, if any come again to me. 

With love, — how true, how tender I shall be ! 



[110] 



THE WOMAN 

I SAID, — I will be strong, as strong as man. 

I will put off the winsome ways of woman. 

I will be strong in body and in mind. 

I will put off the futile charms, the grace, 

The comeliness, the comity, the lure. 

I will forego the feminine seductions, 

SnufF from my eyes the flame of blandishment, 

Draw from my lips the smiles and courting 

curves, 
And bring forth from my brain the mightier 

thoughts, 
To dwell upon my face. 

I will abjure 
The long inheritance of coquetry, 
The futile raptures and the sparkling laughter, 
The suavities, the vanities, the arts. 
The light conceits which steal into the souls of 

men 
And touch and blind them as with summer 

lightning. 
I will loose the soft, slight ways of woman 
And gird myself for strength. 

My thoughts shall be 
Of iron and I will fashion puissant dreams ! 
I will become a man and front the world ! 
The hills, the mountains shall be mine, the rocks, 
The crash of steel, the heave of mighty hammers, 
The blast of furnaces, the pour of smoke, 

[111] 



The tide of trade, the surge of enterprise, 
Power and gigantic roles and plans. 
Lo, I will leave the soft and futile ways 
Of woman and confront the world as man! 

So said I in the early days of dawn. 
In my contemptuous and stalwart youth ! 
And then I rose and faced the world, un- 
womaned. 

As a man the world received me, stern 

And harsh and truculent and unappeased ! 

The outer earth lost all its loveliness, 

For I found only the unbeauteous things. 

The understructure of vast strength, the force. 

The ribs, the sinews, and the solid base. 

No beauty slipped into my hardened soul. 

For beauty I had forfeited for strength. 

No lips curved smiling to my straightened lips. 

No eyes sought mine, for mine were passionless. 

So at last the old desires of woman 

Surged to my soul and vanquished the false 

strength. 
At last I knew the beauty and the charm, 
The power, the wonder of her fair estate, 
Even a vindication for her wiles. 
Her wooings, her devices, her soft arts. 
For are they not accessories of love, 
And is not love commendable.'* 
[112] 



At dawn, 
I knew not of the vital need for love, 
When I made cry for strength ! — 

I will put off 
At last my blundering virility 
And find my femininity again ! — 
I will acknowledge all my womanhood ! 



[118] 



HOPE 

I WAIT within the inner court of life 
For something wonderful to poise, to pass. 
To-morrow it will float above the walls 
In the bright shaping of a golden bird ; 
Or the wide gates will open both their doors 
For mystery to enter, strange of guise, — 
Perchance some visitant with magic wares 
Borne in his hands and beauty in his soul. 
Or yet the walls themselves will disappear 
And the great wonder of the heavens lie re- 
vealed ! 
This emptiness will overflow at last ! — 
But nothing happens. Day by day I wait. 
I nurse my flickering heart. I count the stones, 
And the up-croppings of the moss between. 
I watch the clouds float by and wonder well 
What beauty they imagine lures them on. 
What is it which induces me to hope 
And to endure, endure and yet to hope.? 
What is this strange expectancy of soul 
Which will not die and never will be stayed.'' 
Is it called Hope, Fatuity or Dream, . . . 
Or is it Life itself ? . . . 



[114] 



THE OLD POET BY THE FIRESIDE 

We have our thoughts, — God wot, — as we sit 
by the fireside, 

And let our fancies simmer, we old poets. 

You young singers, with the tide of life brim- 
ming in your eyes 

And the crests of joy breaking in your wave- 
white limbs. 

You with the rich, wine-bright thoughts in your 
veins. 

You with the motion and the laughter and the 
sunrise and the song. 

You with the running, leaping words in your 
throat. 

You with the dancing colors and the rampant 
images, 

And the fiery ideas that beat against the stars, 

O you young poets, with the strength and the 
glory and the arrogance. 

And the sphere of the world swinging in your 
hearts ! — 

Do you not know that our fingertips and our 
souls still vibrate with the memory 

Of all this, that the beauty of the world still 
flickers faintly 

In the iridescent hollows of our minds ? Do you 
not know 

That we also see with our burning mortal eyes 

The robin red against the darkened bough, 

[115] 



And the separate flutings of the leaves, and the 

blazing sky? 
Do you not know that the words quiver on our 

lips 
Like summer shadows to break the gates of 

silence ? 
Do you not know that our silence is wrought of 

many things, 
That it is wrought of some things too vast to 

nestle in the little curves 
Of words ? — 

And do you guess also, young poets, that 
grief is ours, 
That the thoughts may sometimes sway and 

flutter, and the words 
Refuse to come to our aching, yearning souls, 
That we stretch forth our hands in agony and 

find at the last 
That we move our arms in a mist? Do you 

know the pain 
Of an unborn thought, that finds no longer any 

body 
To bring it forth, and perishes in desolation 
In the waste and weeping places of the soul? 

O you young poets, with the wine-bright 

thoughts in your veins 
And the dancing colors and the rampant images, 

and the tide 

[116] 



Brimming in your eyes ! — ^We have our 

thoughts, — God wot, — 
As we sit by the fireside and watch you speak 

with the stars. 



[117] 



BEAUTY 

Beauty pours over us in constant flood, 
In flaming sunsets, mammoth tides of stars, 
Vast, iridescent seas and spraying streams, 
Billows of colored mist and sweeping winds. 
High clouds and sulphur storms and lightning- 
fires. 
Currents of showers and blinding falls of snow. 
Torrents of leaves and grasses, flowers and 

trees. 
Bevies of butterflies and waves of birds. 
Tempests of motion, flame and giant sound. 

And we, we lift our instruments of being 
To the world and let the beauty pour 
Majestic, over our white, listless bodies. 
And our unrapturous souls. 

God, make us great. 
As great as this our beauty-flooded world! 



[118] 



RECAPITULATION IN HEAVEN 

Come with me, love, we have been idle guest 
In heaven for so long. Let us slip doAvn, 
Between the jets of Ariadne's Crown, 
And find a little planet for our rest. 

Let us go down to that scant, elfin sphere, 
Do you remember, — Earth — where little ways 
Were once so sweet, and all the fragile days 
Were flung between the dawn and moon-appear ? 

Do you remember what a moon was there, 
How large it looked and plenteous with dreams, 
And with what strange, unutterable beams 
It drew all beauty up into the air.? 

Do you remember on a tiny hill 
The scent of basswood blossoms in the Spring 
That with the sprays of wind went eddying.? — 
It gives me poignancy in heaven, still! 

And those fair friends of rocks, red columbine? 
Rocks, — you remember.? — more than flowers 

in girth, 
The great, unmantled sinews of the earth, 
That lie and bask within the brave sunshine ? 



[119] 



We knew a sea there, too, that gave a sound 
Piercing and sweet upon the little shore. 
More welcome than the comets' lisp and roar, — 
Full of strange beauties all in heaven unfound. 

And there was many a shape of waterway, 
Of rill and river washing to the sea. 
Of lakes that clasped the world all silverly. 
And clamant brooks tossing the rock-blown 
spray ! 

And irised falls and many a stirless pool. 

And then, — the great, moon-lifted tides. — All 

fair. 
Not like these seething vapors of the air. 
But settled limpidly and deep and cool. 

Do you remember rain that smote the street, — 
God ! Streets ! — You wist ? — those little 

ways 
Laid out for human going, through the maze.^ 
Mind you of all that mortal gear most sweet. 

And of the very forms of men, their hands. 
Their smiling lips, their lighted brows and 

eyes ? — 
Come with me, dear, from this high Paradise 
Down to the little, human-peopled lands. 

[120] 



For I would offer all this skyey boon, 
My life-in-death, my chapter of re-birth, 
For one small sound of old, terrestrial mirth, 
Or one earth-cricket chirping to the moon. 



[121] 



THE BUILDERS OF WALLS 

A Masque 



DRAMATIS PERSONiE 

The Young Man 

Sylvius and his Three Fauns 

Sylvia and her Three Nymphs 

Silence 

The Soet Wind 

Two Fireflies 

Four Dune-Maidens 

Four Wave-Maidens 

Two Silent Human Beings 

Scene: An open forest glade. A path rims 
from left to right, foreground. Darky slim 
trees on either hand. Open space, centre, rich 
with the afternoon sunlight mellomng into sun- 
set. 

Sounds of joyous laughter and shouting are 
heard. A group of wood-creatures tushes in. 
Fauns and Nymphs. The Nymphs are clad in 
light, fluttering garinents of green. The Fauns 
wear the skins of pards and flaunt green leaves 
in their hair. 



[124] 



Sylvia 

[^Leaping in and tossing her hairl 
Oh, how golden the wind is ! 

Second Nymph 

I touched a cloud ! 

Sylvius 
I touched the evening-star behind that cloud ! 

Third Nymph 
I kissed the sun, and felt it bum my hair ! 

Second Faun 
I leaped ten willow-bushes in my path ! 

FIRST Nymph 

Did you not smell the daisies as we passed, 
How rich they were with pungent spiciness? 

[She sniffs in joyous recollection and 
tosses daisies at a Faun] 

Third Faun 

I could outskip the waves! What say you all? 
[125] 



Let's vault the foamy crests that dance below 
Upon the shining beach. 

Second Nymph 

No! No! Let's wait 
Until the setting sun has kindled them, 
And tipped their crests with roses and with fire ! 

Third Nymph 
Yes, till the sea is all one liquid flame! 

Second Faun 

Then shall we slant our bodies through the 

waves. 
Cleave the crimson water, leap and dive. 
And float beneath the gulls. 

[He makes the glad motions of swimming'] 

Sylvius 

Come ! Come ! 
You lovers of the sea, join hands, join hands, 
And let's bestow our love upon the earth. 
While yet the sun hangs golden in the day. 

[They cluster about him^ 
It is the magic hour of purest light. 
Before the day gives up her glowing soul 
To dusk. Now is the sunlight dripping gold ! 
Now all the streams that quiver to the sea 
Are drenched with fire, and ringed with yellow 

pools. 

[126] 



Now all the leaves on all the forest trees 
Are smitten with the slanting of the sun, 
And burned with clarity. Now all the glades 
Are warm with saffron moss. Now every flower 
With all the outpoured perfume of the day 
Is rich and odorous and sweet, before 
The sunset falls. Now in the golden fields 
The laden grasses stoop with dust o' dreams. 
Now all is gold, the earth and sky and sea. 
Now all is gold ! Come, circle in the dance. 

[The Fauns and Nymphs call out in mu- 
sical voices'] 
Come! Come! Come! Come! 

[They run together m a circle, and dam:e 
about, singing or saying rhythmically'] 

Fauns and Nymphs 

Come, come with the wind in your hair 
And the slipping earth at your feet. 
Come, while the golden day is fair, 
And the meadow-grass is sweet. 

Come, while the air is all a-wing, 
And the fields are all a-fire. 
Come! Come! Leap and sing! 
To the wheeling stars aspire ! 

Come, while the world is a tossing sphere. 
Afloat on the windy way. 
Come and dance till the moon is clear, 
[127] 



And the night has kissed the day ! 

\They break the circle swiftly, each Faun 
callmg to each Nymph'\ 
Come! Come! Come! Come! 

\_Each Faun circles each Nymph. Sud- 
denly Sylvius cries out^ 

Sylvius 
Cease ! Cease ! 

[They cease dancvng and liste7i\ 

It is a human foot that falls 
The heavy plodding of a human soul. 
Yes. On this path that winds before us here. 
A path ! A human path ! By all the ways 
Of space, a little, trampled, human path! 
A little, dusty track worn through the flowers. 
These creatures do not know the trackless ways. 
The yielding, windy ways of space. Their feet 
Are captive to the earth and weighed with dust. 
Their hands are stiff and have forgot to curve 
Over the billows of a summei: cloud. 
Or wings of butterflies. Their backs are round. 
That never braved the beating of the wind. 
Nor leaned in leisure 'gainst a poplar tree. 
If they but danced, their very limbs would laugh 
With all the rippling curveis of ecstasy ! 

\The Nymphs and Fauns caper a little, 
and cry out: Yes! Yes!] 

Sylvius 
They have forgot the rhythm of the world! 
[128] 



Back! Back! And let us hide beneath these 

trees, 
And watch the human being plodding by. 

[They hide behind the trees. An old man 
issues from the wood, carrying a bag of 
stones on his back. He never looks to 
right or left. Norn and then he wipes 
his brow. He passes across the path, 
without uttering a word, and disappears 
into the wood, left. The Second Faun 
dashes out from under cover, callkigl 

Second Faun 

Come! They are all blind and cannot see. 
They are as moles that tunnel in the ground, 
And never catch the shimmer of the sun. 
Let's weave a dance upon their dusty path. 

[The others follow him. Now, from the 
other end of the path appears a young 
girl of great loveliness, likewise bur- 
dened. They rush to surround her. 
She looks about with startled eyes, as if 
half-seeing them, and begins to run. 
She disappears into the wood. The 
Fauns and Nymphs are startled] 

Sylvius 
She almost saw us with her cloudless eyes. 
[1^9] 



Second Faun 

She ran so slowly, with so tired a foot. 
Where she could vault a stone, we'd vault the 

hills! 
We are not human, we, for we are, — free ! 

\_The Nymphs and Fauns echo: Free! 
Free!] 

Third Faun 
Let's run far out beyond the track of men, 
Until we pass the wind ! 

Second Faun 

And strike a comet's trail! 

\_The Nymphs and Fauns cr^ out'\ 
Beyond the wind! Beyond the wind! 

[They all rush into the woods, A slight 
pause. Now there appears a young 
man who looks all about hirBy at cloud, 
tree, and earth. He advances almost to 
the middle of the path, flings out his 
arms, and, with the movement, dislodges 
the bag of stones from his back^ 

Young Man 

Great God ! I'll carry no more stones 
And bend my body to the wasting earth. 
I'll not crawl, reptile-like, along the way 
And hear life singing high above my head 
Among the unreached clouds. 
[130] 



I'll not move on 
With this mad throng of sightless, toiling moles. 
Is this called life, this madman's pageantry, 
This rushing on the highway to and fro? 
The air resounds with all the petty furor 
Of the crowd. Their voices lash the heavens. 
Their fingers writhe and twine and pluck and 

grasp. 
Their feet despoil the earth and thickly tread 
Making crude echoes in her sacred aisles. 
Their eyes contract and narrow the sweet sky. 
This is not life, this is but mania. 

[He fdUs to his knees in griefs 
O God, uncoil my mind and all its ways, — 
Its burning thoughts, its colored jets and fires, 
Its rushing torrents and its checkless streams. 
Constrain the world that rushes through these 

doors. 
Close up the aching aisles of thought. 

Close up 
The stricken eyes and seal them from these 

sights. 
Silence the throbbing ears, make still the world. 
Smooth out the paths that life has wrought. 

Unbind 
The knotted ways of mortal thought. Let in 
The peace of primal silence, the great soul 
Of still and manless calm. — 

[He gradually falls and buries his head 
in the grass'\ 

[131] 



Take me, grasses, fold me with your peace, 
The cool, sweet tenderness of your green blades. 
Sheathe me in perpetual green silence. 
Take me from the world. 

\_He falls to weeping, then to silence. 
Sylvius emerges from the wood. He 
goes quietly over to the Young Man] 

Sylvius 

Come, come, you creature of the builded world. 
Why do you lie all shriveled in the grass? 
[The Young Man starts half-way up] 

Young Man 
Who are you, — man with the griefless eyes ? 

Sylvius 

I am Sylvius, — laughter and freedom and life ! 
And you, who are you that carry the bags of 

stones, 
And walk in the dusty path and fall in the 

grass 
Like a withered leaf when its veins are cold.'* 

Young Man 

[JRisvng] 

I.? 

Only a man am I with a back and a pack 
And a pair of hands and a bag of dusty stones. 
And what do I do with my fellow-men ? I build, 
[182] 



I build from the break of the morn to the dusk 

of the day 
The walls of the City of Life. Walls. Walls. 
They shut the spirit in, they build up walls 
About the yearning soul. — Oh travesty of 

life! — 
Hast thou ever been in the shouting cities of 

men.? 
There the silence of air is slashed with the 

swords of sound 
And the peace of the sky and the clear, white 

light of the stars 
Are choked with the blinding towers. In the 

paths they have cut 
For their scurrying feet, the traffic of commerce 

runs, 
Wagons that thunder, horses that struggle, 

motors 
That rush on the wind. Everywhere motion, 

everywhere sound. 
Nowhere is peace and the sky's great round. — 
[He falls on the sun-browned shoulders of 
the Faun] 

Sylvius 

Come, man of the world, lift up your eyes 
To the blossoming beauty of earth. 

Young Man 

What are you saying, 
[133] 



Faun of the woods, O Faun, in whose crystal 

eyes 
No shadow has darkened, no grief has 

e'erpassed ? 
What know you of tears that flow in the human 

heart? 
What know you of pain that wrenches the 

human form 
As the lashing lightnings split the white-riven 

trees ? 
What know you of fears that rise in the human 

throat 
With sulphurous fumes and smother the flame 

of mirth? 
What know you of madness that enters the 

temple of peace? 
What know you of shadows that lie in the path 

of the light? 
What of the hidden side of the mystic moon? 

Sylvius 

Come! Come! You are filling the golden 

places 
With dusk from your own dark eyes. What is 

there but joy? 
What is there but rapture and mirth and 

laughter and light? 
Where has the sun a shadow that does not 

dance 

[134] 



With ripples of lavender, lilac, damask, and 

rose ? 
What has the moon but a golden sphere? 

Young Man 

You are blind, 
Poor Faun. In all the pattern of the earth 
There is no tint, no color resting there. 
It shimmers in the gateways of your eyes. 
The rose is colorless, a mad mirage 
Of floating loveliness, without or form 
Or fragrance or design. Her petals are 
The shaping of your fingertips, her breath 
Your breath, her color rises in your eyes. 
There is no Dawn, no Dusk, no Autumn glow. 
No sapphire of the sea, no crimson wing, 
No green of meadow-grass, no blazing star. 
All is delusion, — emptiness, — delusion, — 
emptiness. 

Sylvius 

Poor man. You are mad with the ways of the 

world, — bruised. 
Battered, all but slain, your finer instincts 
Crushed from the round, sunny grapes of joy 
Into a mass of withered, purple skins. 
Your soul is clouded with complexities. — 
But we shall teach you joy and mirth and sun. 
And dancing feet and dancing ways of thought. 
Behold! I shall summon all my Fauns! 
[1351 



Young Man 

No. No, good Faun, I would rather more 
That you should summon Silence than the 

Dance. 
I would feel the holy emptiness of Silence, 
And all the great, calm beauty of the sky 
Encircling me. 

Sylvius 

Then shall we summon Silence. 

[^He runs softly to the edge of the 'wood'\ 

Come, Silence, slip from the vast curves of the 

sky. 
And from the spans that lie between the stars. 
And from the silver circle of the moon. 
Rise softly from thy couch upon the moss. 
From all the resting shadows of the pools, 
From shafts of cardinal-flowers, and boughs of 

trees. 
From throats of lilies on the lake and folds 
Of fallen leaves, and mists upon the seas. 
Come, Silence, come, from all the soundless 

spaces 
Of the earth. 

[Silence emerges from the wood, a woman, 
tall and heawtiful, clothed in a long 
garment of grey, which trails for a long 
space behind her. She advances with 
slow steps towards the Young Man, who 
falls on the ground before her, kissing 
[136] 



the hem of her robe. She stands with 
perfect stillness over him, her head 
bowed. He gradually relaxes and lies 
as if i/n sleep. This still poise is re- 
tained for a full moment at least. 
Finally Silence moves away to the wood. 
Then the Young Man rises very quietly, 
with the spell of Silence still hovering 
over hinti] 

Young Man 

I have drunk of the motionless waters 

Of silence. My soul has wandered to starless 

spaces, 
Where no light flickers and no sound enters and 

no breath 
Moves from the fragrant world. All was a 

vast, white calm. 
My senses were drawn from my body. I 

became as a soul. 
No substances beat on the hollow sphere of my 

being. 
All was as empty as sleep, or as air. It seemed 
As if silence swept through me at first like a 

stream of beauty, 
And then like a stream of, — death. I pray 

you, O Faun, 
Bring motion again into these breathless places. 
Man cannot dwell in the temple of silence for- 
ever. 

[137] 



I would feel the soft wind blow about my hair, 
And gentle rhythm stray into my soul. 

[Sylvius spins very softlif on his feet 
twice, and waves his hand toward the 
wood. As he speaks y a very soft tune, 
like the rustling of leaves, arises from 
violms'] 

Sylvius 

Come, Soft Wind, that wanders over earth, 
And trips the laughing leaves, and droops the 

grass, 
And blows the perfume from the clustered 

flowers, 

And sprays the blue waves into whitened crests. 

Come, Soft Wind, with gentle motion swayed! 

[From the wood emerges a maiden, dressed 

in a soft, grey, fluttering, knee-length 

gown, with a grey scarf in her hands. 

The Soft Wind weaves a slow, delicate 

motion about the Young Man, while the 

Faun watches from the sidel 

The Soft Wind 

I come from the perfumed vales of space, 
On golden waves of air, 
And waters ever sweet. 

With incense in my hair. 
And laughter in my feet. 
From spicy pine, 

[138] 



And scented vine, 

And fragrant flower, 
And mossy bower. 
And freshened stream. 
And lands of dream, 
I shall blow the shadows away from your face ! 
[Gradually the Soft Wind unweaves, and 
makes her swaying way towards the 
wood. The Young Man stands happy 
and bewildered for a momenty then tries 
to foUom, but Sylvius intercepts hint] 

Sylvius 
Your joy returns, O man? 

Young Man 

It seems a light, 
A soft, low light as of the dawn breaks in 
Upon my soul. 

Oh, let us have more motion. 
Faun, a lighter step, a little sound 
Of laughter! 

Sylvius 

Fireflies then. The little fireflies 
Of a summer night that carry sparks of mirth 
Into the densest clusters of the hanging leaves. 
Ho, fireflies, stars of the underwood ! 

[He snaps his fingers and two skipping 
figures emerge from the wood. They 
are clad in tight jackets and knicker- 
[139] 



bockers, yellow in front, brown in back. 
They carry small electric flashlights.. 
As they run, they give vent to light. 
Puck-like laughter. They dance about 
the Young Man, very lightly, in a circle, 
flashing their lights the while. The 
Fireflies utter one after another, in 
bright staccato, these little phrases, as 
they dance'] 

Fireflies 

Sparkle ! 
Twinkle! 

Light o' feet! 
Fairy-fleet ! 
Make a star ! 
Glitter here! 
Flash a-far 
Flash a-near! 
Touch a leaf! 
Brighten grief! 

Pierce the shower ! 
Firefly! 

Flicker by! 

[It is seen that the Young Man begins to 
move his feet a little, as if in unconscious 
response. The Faun motions to the 
Fireflies, and they disappear suddenly 
into the wood] 

[140] 



Young Man 

More! More, magic Faun! My blood 

begins 
To dance like Spring sap twinkling in the 

bough ! 
More mirth ! More sound ! The mounting life 

in me 
Tilts softly open the shut doors 
Of all my senses for the inflow of the world. 

Sylvius 

Then listen, man of clay. Let all the conches 
Of your ears be vibrant to the earth. 
Attuned to all the hidden under-sounds, 
The unloosed voices of the earth. Behold, 
The world is straining with imprisoned sound! 
The forest lifts its branches with a sunlit 
Sound, The grass beneath our feet sings 

faintly 
Of the flower-roots tangled in its mesh, of 

streams, 
And swaying shadows and of meadow-things 
That brush its surface lightly as they pass. 
The very light is vocal, and the motes 
Of air laugh as they weave their golden 

maze ! — 
Let dunes and waves reveal their minstrelsy. 

[He leaps into the air, summoning the 
spirits of the dimes and the sea from the 
woods. There rtish from the woods 
[141] 



four maidens clad in longy sand-colored 
goitms, with green girdles about their 
maists. On their feet are sandals. In 
their girdles are sprays of sword-grass. 
They wave above their heads soft 
scarves. Their hair flies behind them. 
Back of them are four other maidens in 
short f very full indigo-blue dresses. 
About their shoulders clvngs a mass of 
foamy white scarf -material. They also 
carry white scarves. Immediately upon 
the svmvmons of the Faun, the maidens 
emerge and burst into speech. They 
svng or say as they advance^ 

Dune-Maldens 

Sing of the pour of the sunlight 
On the golden slopes of sand. 

Wave-Maidens 

Sing of the blue of the waters 
Caught from the blue of the dome. 

Dune-Maidens 

Sing of the sweep of the sea-winds 
That gather us up from the strand. 

Wave-Maidens 

Sing of the wings of the sea-gulls 
That dip through the bubbles of foam. 
[142] 



Dune-Maidens 

Sing of the willows and grasses 
That touch us with soft delight. 

Wave-Maidens 

Sing of the sun on the spray-crests 
That flashes with multiple fire! 

Dune-Maidens 

Sing of the desert silence 
That covers us day and night. 

Wave-Maidens 

Sing of the motion and laughter 

That ruffles our waves to desire 1 

[^They cease singing and continue their 
separate rhythmic movement on the 
woodland path. Then the Waves, lift- 
ing their mhite scarves over the Dunes, 
pass by them, performing a running 
daU'ce in front of them, while the Dunes 
stand erect and silent. Presently the 
Waves turn and leap into the air before 
the Dunes, tossing their white scarves 
high. The Dunes became active, an- 
swering to the onrush and leap high in 
response, fluttering their sand-colored 
scarves. The Waves gradually subside 
lower and lower, the Dunes slowly drop 
down their scarves and lessen their mad 
[143] 



dance to the former swaying movement. 
The Waves break through their line 
again and dance away into the woodSy 
the Dunes following. The Young Man 
leaps after the retreating flgureSy then 
turns and shouts'] 

Young Man 

The joy has mounted to m}^ soul, and puts 

forth 
Flowers and leaves. 'Twill bourgeon to the 

clouds ! — 
O Faun, bring forth the essence of the woods, 
The veriest, maddest joy that all the world 
Contains ! 

Sylvius 

My Fauns, my Fauns are symbols of mad joy. 
The joy that dwells in Nature, and that man 
Has long forgot, the joy of growing things 
And singing things, and things that leap and 

dance 
Within the sunlit air, without a trace of grief, 
Without a stain of pride or vanity 
Or all the mad complexities and false 
Emotions of the little tribe of men. 
Free, free and glad, and pure as floating air. 
Glad even to die, with song upon the lips. 
As birds that drop with music to the earth, and 

lose 
Their little dream among the flowers. — Glad, 
[144] 



Glad as sunlight and as Life itself ! 
Come. Come, my Fauns, from all the wood- 
land ways ! 

[The Fauns and Nymphs rush madly 
from the woods. Sylvius joins them. 
They circle about the Young Man] 

Fauns and Nymphs 

We leap, we leap through the shining air, 
And through the floods of light. 
The winds spread out our flying hair. 
And lash us on to flight! 

We run, we run in the showering rain. 

And drink the melted skies. 

And then when the rainbow caps the rain, 

We dance with the butterflies. 

[The Fauns and Nymphs open out into 
a wide crescent back of the Young Man. 
They move rhythmically from side to 
side, while Sylvia skips forward, bends 
low before the Young Man, sways 
lightly before him, and addresses to him 
the following^ 

Sylvia 

Hast thou ever lain along a bough. 
And cooled the sunlight on thy brow, 
And brushed a passing robin's wing, 
And heard the peopled orchard sing? 
[14f5] 



Hast thou ever crouched in columbine, 
On some green hill-slope's soft incline, 
And felt the earth around thee grow. 
And life and beauty through thee flow? 

Hast thou ever in the night 

Bent above a flowering spray 

And waited for the moon's white light 

To fill the star-endrifted way? 

Hast thou ever come to dream 

Far from flaming town and mart, 

By a little, simple stream. 

And found the Universe's heart? 

[Sylvia returns to the Nymphs and 
Fauns, and they circle anew about the 
Young Man. He has raised his hand 
to his forehead, as if overwhelmed with 
a new sense of heaiity'] 

Fauns and Nymphs 

We vault, we vault like the bounding deer 

Over the rocks and trees ! 
We follow the streams where the water is clear, 
And wade to our sun-browned knees. 

[The Young Man, able to contain himself 
no longer, cries out, as they dance'\ 

Young Man 
Oh joy of laughter and of light, 
[146] 



Of leaping limbs and starry flight, 
Of windy dances, fetter-free. 
And souls brimful of ecstasy ! 
O Fauns, take me into your throng 
And fill the planet with your song ! 

\^He leaps mto their midst and joins their 
wheeling circle, hand in hand^] 

Fauns and Nymphs and Young Man 

We dive, we dive through the foaming spray, 

And down the slopes of sea! 
We capture the stars at the end of day. 

And sleep where the shadows be. 

We bound, we bound and brush the flowers, 
And pluck the fruit on the bough. 

We weave a garland of petaled hours 
From the living leaves of Now. 

We dance, we dance in the golden night. 

And spring to the stars of the sky. 
We laugh, we laugh till the stars take flght 
And the flowering earth shall die ! — 
And the flowering earth shall die. 

[The sound of a hell is heard from the 
direction of the city. The Fauns a/nd 
Nymphs, with half -startled glances, 
break the circle quietly. The Young 
Man separates himself from the group, 
listens for a moment with an expression 
[147] 



changing from perplexity to the calm- 
ness of decision^ 

Young Man 

I must return again. My soul cries out 

For human faces and for human hands, 

Men's yearning eyes, their seeking feet, the 

shadows 
Of their doors, the windings of their streets, 
The sad-glad music of their life. — But oh, 
The walls ! — I shall not help to build the walls. 
[The Fauns and Nymphs run over softly, 
capture the hag of stones which still 
lies upon the ground, begin to pelt each 
other lightly, and run off in this way 
into the woods^ 
There are too many walls twixt soul and star, 
Too many walls twixt soul and soul ! I shall 
Return with all the wonder thou hast poured 
Into my being, — silence, dreams and dancing. 
Stars and seas and dunes, and strike a gate- 
way 
Through the walls ! 

Farewell, exultant Faun. 

Sylvius 

Farewell, O man, and let the dancing tingle 
In your blood, and let the great, white stars 
Glow in your soul, until your little dream 
Be folded in the earth. — 
[148] 



Young Man 

Till then, O Faun, 
I shall have life in all its wonderment. 
No walls of living shall shut in my soul. 
My brothers build and build and build, — 

customs, 
Mad desires, machinery, gear. 
Trappings, wealth, complexity, — for what? 
They know not, but they build. 

And all the while 
Life stands afar and summons them 
Out into the broad, white fields of space. — 

O Faun, I go to strike a sudden gateway 
Through the walls, between the tight, blind 

stones. 
Into the open causeway of the stars ! 

[The Faun gives a gesture of farewell, 
turns and runs away into the woods, 
left. The Young Man walks down the 
path, right, towards the city] 



[149] 



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